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Notes -
I read something today which I have long thought deep down, but hadn’t really seen spelled out elsewhere.
Namely, the censoring done by the liberal left, while there, is rather mild in the scheme of things and is probably much less than the same left would be censored by the people it currently censors if that group was in power.
The quote that brought it to my mind was from here, on Richard Hannania’s substack. After a post discussing being banned by Twitter, he drops this at the end of the article.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/saying-goodbye-to-twitter
The attitude of censoring opponents seemed to have crystallized for the left around 2016, where I distinctly remember the conversation centering around the limits of tolerating intolerant ideologies. (Which seems to have become fully settled by now, interesting to observe an ideological movement update in real time in that way).
Does Hannania have a point here? Is the issue that the right takes offense with censorship itself, or would the right if it actually gained back power censor in a much more strict and comprehensive way?
He makes another interesting point about finding value reading the NYT. Is this true? I can’t subscribe because it’s funding the enemy. I feel like most new articles say at Bloomberg I can see the headline and get 95% of the article. X,Y,Z happened. Market zigged. Quite a couple fund managers getting their name in an article.
For something like Ukraine War it seems like the journalists follow the same twitter accounts and then NYT regurgitates the twitter accounts 24 hrs later.
I don’t think I follow a lot of the dunking on people accounts.
I feel like the NYT could be good for like a Doctor whose not always online or needing to dissect information faster but can get a more efficient day or two late news source.
I read the NYT every day, and I can say that every time I see a post here, or elsewhere, about "why isn't the media covering X," I had seen several NYT articles on the subject (eg: supposed noncoverage of Tigray; the claim that the media really wasn't covering Ukraine much any more). As it happens, the NYT is one of four US newspapers which still have foreign bureaus (the others are the Wash Post, the Wall St Journal, and the LA Times), and according to Wikipedia they have 2000 staff writers - twice what the WaPo has. So, yes, you are likely to see coverage there that is not going to show up elsewhere.
Yes but do they say anything on Ukraine that isn’t already reported on twitter 24 hrs earlier?
Well, I do not read every tweet that is in existence, of course. And much of what I do see on twitter is a link to reporting, including to reporting by the Times. Anyhow, much of what they report is not simply facts ("x soldiers were killed in town y") but analysis, discussion of strategy, etc, etc. I am sure there are political scientist or military historians who tweet similar things; indeed, I follow some of them. But, most people don't. And, of course, the NY Times covers all sorts of other stories, from business to the arts. And it publishes long-form articles as well Could I in theory get that same information from my Twitter feed? Maybe, but probably not in practice.
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