Illustrative Debate of Whether We Should Trust Mainstream Media.”

I have long enjoyed listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcasts and reading his books. However, my respect for him fell precipitously after reading the words he spoke at the Recent Munk debate in Toronto [Munk Transcript] Tara Henley reports, in her article, "An astonishing Munk debate in Toronto, Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray's landslide, Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg's mendacity - and five reasons why trust in the mainstream media is so low":

At the beginning of the event, the crowd was split 48 percent to 52 percent in favour of the resolution. By night’s end, a full 67 percent agreed that the mainstream media should not be trusted and only 33 percent disagreed. This is a 39 percent vote gain.

So, what exactly happened here?

Let’s unpack the specific tendencies that Gladwell and Goldberg exhibited that I believe swayed the audience — that, in fact, show up regularly in the mainstream press.

The first of these tendencies is mendacity.

The public is not stupid, and people get it when arguments are made in bad faith....

The second tendency on display is self-absorption.

While both Taibbi and Murray focused their arguments on the impacts of media failures on society as a whole, it was telling that Malcolm Gladwell largely focused his arguments on himself....

The third tendency is a demonstration of ideological capture.

The fact that Malcolm Gladwell fell back on arguments around a lack of diversity in the press — on a stage occupied by Taibbi, a Black man, a gay man, and a woman — signaled allegiance to a particular political project....

The pervasiveness of this political ideology within the press corps is a problem, and something that I hear complaints from the public about constantly.

Continue ReadingIllustrative Debate of Whether We Should Trust Mainstream Media.”

The Problems with FIRE

Jeffrey Sachs, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is blessed with terrible critics. As its public profile has risen sharply in recent years, so has the volume of criticism against it. Unfortunately, those critiques are almost uniformly bad.

With limited exceptions, critics of FIRE tend to rehearse the same tired arguments: that it receives right-wing money (so what?), often attacks the campus left (can you blame them?), and is uncharitable to college administrators (rightly so).

Continue ReadingThe Problems with FIRE

Americans Who Approve of China’s Ghastly Lockdown . . .

Nellie Bowles writes:

China’s obsession with Zero-Covid: Chinese authorities have taken a brutal stance on Covid: They have welded people into their own apartments and locked building exit doors. Last week, an apartment fire killed 10 in China’s Xinjiang province, and many say the dead were locked in their building and fire trucks were slowed by road blocks that were the result of the draconian Covid rules. The result has been unprecedented protests across the country. In Beijing, people chanted “no to Covid tests, yes to freedom.”

Some on the American left were quick to defend the CCP. Being welded into your apartment, having all the exits locked in a fire, these are just the price of safety. One particularly wild example: When the Washington Post ran a news story about the CCP’s flawed Zero-Covid response, the paper’s most famous reporter, Taylor Lorenz, slammed her employer’s phrasing and defended the CCP. “Choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people (as the US is doing) isn’t a ‘critical flaw,’” Lorenz wrote.

I do have good news for America’s Pandemic Forever advocates: You’ve won. Yes, a few people still go to the movies, and you can always tweet about how selfish and evil they are. But take a look at this chart . . .

→ Americans’ staggering loneliness: We were already spending more and more time alone each year. Then Covid hit, and our isolation grew much deeper. Our social lives haven’t bounced back.

I got emphatic pushback when I agreed with Glenn Greenwald (in August 2021) that our COVID policies need to be based on sober cost-benefit analyses, the same type of analyses we use when we discuss traffic safety. I think it's clear that Taylor Lorenz has convinced many people that more lockdown is the best policy, but she (and her ilk) are ignoring the exponentially greater damage that lockdowns have caused.

Continue ReadingAmericans Who Approve of China’s Ghastly Lockdown . . .

New York Tries to Force Website Owners to Regulate “Hate Speech” FIRE Pushes Back.

New York has enacted a law ostensibly requiring "social media platforms" to police "hate speech." Here is an excerpt from that law, Section 394-CCC:

2. A SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK THAT CONDUCTS BUSINESS IN THE STATE, SHALL PROVIDE AND MAINTAIN A CLEAR AND EASILY ACCESSIBLE MECHANISM FOR INDIVIDUAL USERS TO REPORT INCIDENTS OF HATEFUL CONDUCT. SUCH MECHANISM SHALL BE CLEARLY ACCESSIBLE TO USERS OF SUCH NETWORK AND EASILY ACCESSED FROM BOTH A SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORKS' APPLICATION AND WEBSITE, AND SHALL ALLOW THE SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK TO PROVIDE A DIRECT RESPONSE TO ANY INDIVIDUAL REPORTING HATEFUL CONDUCT INFORMING THEM OF HOW THE MATTER IS BEING HANDLED.

3. EACH SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK SHALL HAVE A CLEAR AND CONCISE POLICY READILY AVAILABLE AND ACCESSIBLE ON THEIR WEBSITE AND APPLICATION WHICH EXPLANATION INCLUDES HOW SUCH SOCIAL MEDIA NETWORK WILL RESPOND AND ADDRESS THE REPORTS OF INCIDENTS OF HATEFUL CONDUCT ON THEIR PLATFORM.

There are many problems with this law, according to FIRE:

Today, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sued New York Attorney General Letitia James, challenging a new state law that forces websites and apps to address online speech that someone, somewhere finds humiliating or vilifying....

“New York politicians are slapping a speech-police badge on my chest because I run a blog,” said plaintiff Eugene Volokh, who co-founded The Volokh Conspiracy legal blog in 2002. “I started the blog to share interesting and important legal stories, not to police readers’ speech at the government’s behest.”

The law forces internet platforms of all stripes to publish a policy explaining how they will respond to online expression that could “vilify, humiliate, or incite violence” based on a protected class, like religion, gender, or race. The law also requires the platforms to create a way for visitors to complain about “hateful” content or comments, and mandates that they answer complaints with a direct response. Refusal to comply could mean investigations from the attorney general’s office, subpoenas, and daily fines of $1,000 per violation.

New York’s law doesn’t define “vilify,” “humiliate,” or “incite.” Yet, it targets speech that could simply be perceived by someone, somewhere, at some point in time, to vilify or humiliate, rendering the law’s scope entirely subjective. (The First Amendment does not protect inciting imminent violence, but New York’s law offers no indication, as the First Amendment requires, that it applies only to speech directed to and likely to produce imminent lawless action.) ....

“The state of New York can’t turn bloggers into Big Brother, but it’s trying to do just that,” said FIRE attorney Daniel Ortner. “The government can’t burden online expression protected by the Constitution, whether it’s doing it in the name of combating hate or any other sentiment. Imagine a similar law requiring sites to publish a reporting policy for speech the state considers un-American — that would be just as unconstitutional.”

Here is FIRE's complaint, filed the Federal District Court of New York, Southern District.

Continue ReadingNew York Tries to Force Website Owners to Regulate “Hate Speech” FIRE Pushes Back.