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House Expels George Santos From Congress
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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My god. This deliciously tasty excerpt:
The real question is where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
Too busy playing horse race? Frantically trying to find something newsworthy about Hunter Biden's laptop? Credulously glorifying some billionaire's childish misconceptions?
Guess we'll never know.
Well, he's a representative for New York, in a district for ~~New York City itself.~~ Long Island and "technically" a tiny bit of NYC. (I have been informed that his district is mostly Long Island)
Let's break this down into two parts, okay?
Local journalism is dead, dead, dead, dead dead. Especially in big places like New York City, where everyone assumes that the New York Times will be covering things. They didn't dig deep into Mayor Adams either, and that guy is under investigation now as well. They didn't question his former police credentials after decades of police misconduct. Beyond that the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper. I'm sure there are plenty of small independent news sources in New York City, but I'm also sure they're mostly drowned out and ignored compared to how many people read something like the NYT.
Corruption in New York City is literally, completely nothing new. Journalists have been failing to uncover unscrupulous activity for decades in this city. As I referenced mayor Adams above, this city filled with the rich, egotistical, and greedy, is a city built on the kind of lies George Santos peddles. How do I know? Because that city allowed Donald Trump to be a successful real estate developer using similar tactics. People have known he's corrupt since forever, but plenty of his corruption was just ignored until decades later. Same with Rudy Guiliani and so on.
Now I'm not saying we should just give up. Local journalism is important to fight for, and NYC being a corrupt hell-hole isn't a permanent foregone conclusion. However, my point is that NYT employs far fewer reporters than you think to cover an entire country, and the dearth of real local news sources all over the country is contributing to these kind of people succeeding, because the local press is dead in the water and can't afford to send someone researching local corruption.
Pay for your local news, is what I am saying, I guess, and things might marginally improve.
I mean, it was always a lifestyle brand. Even back in the day you'd open the "Lifestyle" section of the paper, and it would be about how to afford that third house in the Hamptons. It's always been clear who their market is aimed at.
Yeah, actual journalism is dead, especially since investigating stuff like this might get you raided by SWAT
Worth pointing out part of the reason local journalism died is because it's not financially viable.
Because interest in local politics died.
If people have a shit, journalist could make a living.
In NYC construction, it's well known that Trump businesses would get bids contracted, then call a meeting before kickoff and demand that the primes and subs lower there price or they won't honor the contract. Some contractors would already have materials purchased and running the clock on the Net30s with their vendors. Trump Co. would basically tell them to go pound salt and try to sue if you want.
These days, the NYT likes to think of itself as a tech company that also does some journalism. They've bought games like Wordle, they're a podcasting company, they publish books...
Games and alternative media formats for journalists have always been a part of journalism. I'm not sure how embracing modern technology makes them any less of a news organization. Would you prefer only the crossword and only in print?
A newspaper having a word game, a radio presence, and publishing books is not really a gotcha.
He was a representative of long island not NYC, specifically the district my dad resides in so I get to poke fun at him for electing this absolute joke of an asshat lol
Checking the map it looks like part of it might be in queens so "technically" some part of it is NYC, but it's mostly rich long island assholes. (I wish my dad was rich, he's just lucky to have had a house in that area for a long time) lol
You can tell I'm not from the area, because divisions like that are lost on me. I just know local news is hollowed out nationwide, and I somehow suspect it's a similar situation for New York state as a whole. Thanks for the more detailed breakdown of his district for me.
Absolutely, local news would more than likely be "responsible" for covering him and they tend to favor the right, but not excessively thankfully.
Ah yes, clearly we should simply accept that corruption is endemic, unavoidable really, and expect our press to ignore it.
Tale as old as time, I'm sure it'll work out fine.
They have more important things to focus on anyway! Like Hunter Biden's laptop.
And of course, Journalism's collapsing payment model is entirely the public's fault. Just give them more money you lazy bums!
Nice complete misrepresentation of what I said, chucklefuck.
EDIT: Also came back because like, you're going to bitch about journalists not doing their job and then turn around and say its not our job to fund them. Pick a fucking lane. Do you care about journalism or not?
Oh I'm sorry, after re-reading it looks like you actually said we should fight for better journalism by skipping breakfast, or selling our plasma, and giving the money we save to the conglomerates providing our local news. Totally makes sense.
If you think journalists aren't living the same way, you're out of your mind. They need to be able to take care of themselves, too, to do their jobs.
But cool, I guess the answer is fuck all journalism then, because you can't be fucked to care about how it's funded. You're expecting it to just be handed to you by people who do it for the love of it, and then wonder why that doesn't happen, when you yourself understand exactly why it can't and you just explained it.
What a fucking shitty crank. You don't get what you want, so you want to tear down the whole thing, which is conveniently what you've accused me of. Do you do a lot of projection like this?
I don't exactly see you considering solutions, just a lot of bitching.
Because you're obviously struggling, what I'm saying that objective & effective journalism is vital to informed decision-making in a democracy, and we're not getting it because journalism in the US is run as a business¸ which imo will always end with media focusing exclusively on whatever makes them the most money, irrespective of the truth. If we want real journalism we need to view it, and fund it, as a public service. The problem is systemic, and our news media will continue to fail us until the system is rectified.
👍 Do you feel better?
Do you?
You know what? I do.
I don't disagree, but you're skipping a lot of steps of how we fucking get there, man. You're not going to start the revolution tomorrow by being an asshole on the internet. You'll just get a lot of people quoting Lebowski at you: "You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole."
Sorry I'm busy living in the world as it currently exists instead of expending all my energy on lofty ideas that sadly most Americans are too toothlessly uneducated in understanding, yet supporting. I'd rather work on building coalitions, talking about how we can change things, and working within the system as it exists at the moment because we don't have a lot of other choices.
But sure, be angry that you can't magically snap your fingers to make it better overnight, that really helps us get there. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater type stupidity.
It's not like non-profit journalistic outfits don't exist, but they need funding. NPR used to be Publicly funded, but last I checked, the public funding dried the fuck up, because people don't call to pledge money in telethons anymore, and surprise, now they're corporate funded instead.
Where do you think the money comes from to fund public news? It comes from the public, either in donations, or in the case of something like the BBC, taxes and fees like a TV license. Either way, you'd be "selling plasma" to afford it. You don't suddenly get to opt out of funding it because you're too poor when its taxes.
Hey man, call me an asshole if it makes you feel better, I'm just pointing out the problems as I see them, and the giant gaping holes in your suggestions. Widespread political corruption isn't something we can safely ignore. The public can't crowdfund journalism in a sustainable way, unless they get a substantial increase in disposable wealth.
That's the world as it currently exists.
One Koch donation is worth more than the locals can ever give to local journalism, and most local outlets are just Sinclair Broadcast Group in a rubber mask anyway. But sure, be angry that you can't fix it by parroting a facile solution, that really helps us get there.
In response to your edit:
You're so close to getting it omg. Keep trying. It's almost like this is a problem that's been considered before, and had a solution. How could we ensure a public service is publicly funded? Should our poorest even be selling their plasma to pay taxes? That almost sounds like a whole other problem... If only we had a way to regulate these things. But of course, we can only consider solutions within a capitalist model, cuz 'merica, so obviously there's no solution.
So once again, short of total revolution, what's your actual plan to get us there? You've made it clear the public is too poor to support publicly funded news, so what is your suggestion to make news publicly funded short of taxation that would increase the tax bill of the public that is too poor to afford it?
Seriously if you can't bring an actual answer, then fuck off already. I know my answer isn't good, but fuck me, it's better than bitching and doing nothing.
Also, let's not pretend that the fucking BBC is some paragon of virtue, publicly funded news can be conservative bullshit too.
In response to your edit: You realize the reason I called you an asshole is because people who want things to get better share information instead of acting like a smug prick because others don’t already know.
Like, way to channel Angelica from fucking Rugrats in the 90’s: “If you have to ask, you’ll never know!”
Saying shit like “since you’re struggling” to me when at no point before that had you mentioned “public funding” is literally the definition of being a smug asshole, chucklefuck. Sorry I can’t read your fucking mind because you want to dance around the fucking answer instead of just saying it.
You know what actually helps? Educating other people, not shitting on them because they’re not fucking already "enlightened" like you. “Keep trying” said no good teacher ever instead of helping the student understand the concept.
No wonder you’re obviously fucking miserable.
You still refused to answer the question, because you’re more concerned with lording your knowledge over others instead of sharing it. Kind of antithetical to your stated socialist ideals, isn’t it? Hoarding information is what capitalists do you fucking idiot.
So keep enjoying yourself by denying others information and acting like a smug prick about it, you'd fit in just fine with the Koch's. Which, once again, is why I called you an asshole, asshole.
Lol, I'm not hoarding anything, just trying to get you to actually think critically about the problems inherent in your approach. And yep, I'm being smug, because you refuse to think seriously about your responses, while getting all huffy because someone dared to point out how unworkable the easy answers are. But calling me names totally strengthens your position though, good job there.
You keep mentioning 'total revolution' as the obvious solution, and I would like you to think about why that is. I think we need big structural changes if we want to claw back anything approximating a democracy. You keep saying I won't give you a solution, and it's baffling to me that you can't get there on your own, but if you need spoon-feeding, imo one of the most fundamental things we need do is go back to taxing the wealthy fairly, in order to pay for social services. gasp
It's just boggling to me that you apparently can't even begin to see taxes as something that would help the poor, rather than hurt them, a perspective I'd suspect you've picked up from our deeply biased news media. Turns out, instead of making the poor sell their plasma, we should actually be making billionaires sell their yachts and vacation homes.
I remember seeing articles about this stuff during his election. Republicans elected him anyway. That's where we are now
Why are you blaming journalists and not the GOP for not vetting their own fucking candidate.
¿Porque no los dos?
Have you seen most of the recent GOP candidates?
How do we know he isn't above their threshold for corruption and dishonesty?
Their bar seems pretty low.
Pretty sure the republicans saw that fake resume and thought "fucking hell, we got president material here!"
PBS News Hour - Small, local paper uncovered and reported George Santos scandal before November election, January 9, 2023
Local media does need support.
There aren't enough journalists to go around. There are hundreds of congresspeople and there definitely aren't hundreds of journalists covering random unimportant congresspeople.
People have voted with their dollars, saying they don't care enough about vetting congresspeople before they're elected to actually pay the salaries of journalists to do that.
Wow, so It's almost as if expecting unregulated capitalism to solve this problem is not working? How could that be?
Oh well, I guess we just need to ignore the problem until it gets better.
Look the incredibly rich people who own the media wish that us peasants would care enough about politics to force them to cover these things properly but unfortunately all their journalists are busy writing opinion pieces about how we need to get back in the office, how we shouldn't even try to make ethical purchasing decisions, and how great whatever makes them the most money this week is.
Journalism as it used to exist has been absolutely gutted. There's no time for investigation, we need endless content pumped out at faster and faster rates. Who cares what's accurate as long as people click the link and give up that sweet, sweet ad revenue?