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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

That’s really what is annoying [Mark Thompson, CEO of the New York Times]. He’s got a newsroom with 1,000 or more people turning out perhaps one, possibly two, pieces each a week. All to impeccable journalistic standards as to process and near no diversity of viewpoint nor thought at all. Then along come some bunch of teenage scribblers, some of them even without Masters degree in journalism, producing stuff that people actually want to read. How Very Dare They?

Tim Worstall

6 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Slartibartfarst

    Yers, well, I reckon that rather hits the nail on the head.
    How very dare they indeed!
    Strange to think though that Facebook may have set itself up as some sort of unofficial censor, or “arbiter of truth” gatekeeper in news reporting – well, as regards what is run on Facebook and passes for “news” (fake or otherwise), at any rate.

    Maybe Facebook are up to the task. Maybe they can do it – but, sustainable? Meh. Probably not for very long. I’d give them up to Wednesday week, and then it’ll be back to normal and the gates will be open again to the usual rubbish/propaganda that the Facebook users have come to enjoy (and sadly, yes, even believe).

    Meanwhile, it will likely remain a wise practice to avoid attaching any credibility to the printed word, just because it is printed/published, and regardless of the forum that it is printed/published in.

  • pete

    Last I heard the NYT was hiring a person with a history of racist tweets.

  • Sam Duncan

    “Strange to think though that Facebook may have set itself up as some sort of unofficial censor”

    Not really. It was more or less inevitable. It would be wrong to say I’ve never understood the appeal of the thing at all, but the elephant in the room for me has always been the fact that it’s a website, a single domain, under the control of a single business. There’s always a danger that “curation” will turn into censorship.

    The great thing about the basic internet/web structure is that it gives greater control to individuals over what is published and read than ever before. It’s not perfect; we’re still ultimately at the mercy of the companies who control the infrastructure (service providers, web hosts, the DNS system) but they aren’t one entity. “Social media” is a massive step backwards.

  • Stonyground

    I started to see the old media as being somewhat irrelevant when they started regularly reporting as news something that I had read several months earlier on some blog or other. It now seems that they are no longer talking about the same stuff that the internet scribblers are so this no longer happens. The last time that I bought a newspaper was about ten years ago when they were giving away a free Roxy Music CD. I didn’t even look at it, I took the CD out and threw the paper straight in the bin.

  • Paul Marks

    No it is not “just” the case that the New York Times has an extreme leftist bias – and this “School of Journalism” leftism by which the “Progressives”, who control so many of the institutions of society (which they took over with extreme ruthlessness – making sure their opponents end up as “mid western gas station operators” or, indeed, car parking people at Wicksteed Park) presents its nonsense as “unbiased” – and is celebrated by “Ofcom”. the “Electoral Commission” and other “Deep State” filth in our own country.

    The New York Times does not just twist things – it also LIES and covers things up, and it had done so for a very long time.

    It covered up the deaths of millions of people in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, it supported the American pro Communist “Old China hands” who made sure that Mao won the Chinese Civil War by demanding an end to the Manchurian Offensive in 1946, it (the New York Times) pretended that Castro and his gang were not Marxists, the New York Times covered up Kennedy’s Addison’s disease, and covered up his drug taking (basically every drug he could lay his hands on – think about that, the man was in charge of nuclear weapons), and on and on……..

    The New York Times and the rest of the “mainstream media” (and the education system that produces such people) is fanatically dedicated to the destruction of Western civilisation – there can be no compromise with such people, they will either destroy the West or they will themselves be bankrupted.

  • terence patrick hewett

    A related subject:

    “An MP-led commission has been set up to examine the impact that automation and AI will have on the jobs market.

    The panel was set up by the Community union and the Fabian Society and is led by Senior Labour MP Yvette Cooper.

    Its first report, which is not due until 2020, will examine how to create and protect good quality jobs and support workers through the process of rapid technological change.”

    Pause for gales of laughter: when automation engineers like me were putting millions of factory workers out of employment not a peep from these people did we here – but now that their jobs are threatened – a different story – pass the sick bag.