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There are elements about this that are correct (journalists not ever giving a crap about "clicks" -- really it just isn't a thing folks) https://mynewbandis.substack.com/p/slate-star-clusterfuck with a lot of stuff that seems kind of silly.
It isn't at all clear to me that the tech world, or the rationalists in particular, are more hostile to "critique" than journalists themselves are. I mean, was she paying attention to the fifty scandals that rocked the NYT this year *internally* as people parsed and reparsed
the way issues and individual journalists were framed? This controversy is not substantively different from any of that. It really isn't.
And while it is fun to talk about how tech should be open to "critique" that is not really the issue. Its the same issue it always is: how the story of a movement or an event is framed.
Some things are focused on, some things are not. Some things are included, some are not. It is 100% legitimate for the rationalists to argue that this particular's article decisions on what to include and what not to include seriously misrepresent them.
Because actually it isn't journalists job to *critique* -- that is a columnist's jobs. But the framing is inevitable--its an inescapable part of writing, summarizing, and reporting.
And while she makes a great deal of how she wishes tech people were more self aware, I wish *journalists* were more self aware themselves! At how their experiences and biases sink into their work and the way they represent people and events that are not themselves.
But... in 2021.... given the controversies that riled journalism over the last five years... and the incessant focus on these exact questions in the realms of sex and race and all that... there isn't really an excuse for an editor to be innocent on this front.
Of course it is ok for the tech people, or the rationalists, or whomever, to argue that journalists are misrepresenting them. Conspiratorial claims made are a bit silly, but journalism doesn't need to have an explicit "agenda" to be deeply flawed or dishonest.
Also: the other thing that bothers me about this piece. She suggests that the rationalists and company have an inflated sense of self importance, viewing this sort of article as a premeditated attack when really it was just one of six things the journalist is working on this
weekend. And I am sure that is correct. But it points to the essential problem with journalism and journalists that most journalists themselves fail to understand:
for a journalist, most pieces are just another part of the daily grind. But for the subject of any given piece, being reported on is highly fraught event -- a robbing of agency, a moment when others step in to tell your story for you.
And that lasts. It has consequences. A journalist rather thoughtlessly doing his daily grind can ruin a person, a company, or a movement, and can do so thoughtlessly.
And so Spiers can say, "Well Scott, you are just taking this too seriously, you are way not important enough to be the center of journalist conspiracy against you" --- and she is right. But it almost condemns the NYT more.
Outing Scott's real name in the NYT meant that he has to cease his career as a psychiatrist! And if that was done not intentionally, but because "it was just one of six stories on that reporter's plate" at the time, then again....
it betrays a terrible lack of *self awareness* on the part of the journalists involved, and an abnegation of responsibility on the part of editors like Spiers, who make excuses for them.
In this sense, and contra to correct thinking, I often prefer opinion columns over journalism straight, because at least the opinion columnists are open about the ideology charged nature of their work and what the consequences of their writing may be.
That's all.
That's all.
