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by tptacek 3406 days ago
Almost certainly, you say!

It's hard to think of something Paul Graham wrote that has done more damage to discussions on HN than his piece about submarine PR pieces.

4 comments

When people thought that every published article was some journalist independently deciding something was newsworthy and thus writing up their neutral research on it, they were wrong.

When people thought every published article was some propagandist's attempt to sway public opinion, they were wrong.

But the second view is a lot less wrong than the former.[1]

"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations." -- George Orwell.

[1] Didn't feel like following Asimov's pattern for the third line.

That doesn't mean they aren't real. Did you see that article on cursive writing? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12193539)
The submarine piece was a submarine piece to try to get people to generally ignore the press for anything substantive and instead elect Trump as president.
are you saying that the post you responded to did damage to this discussion? I think you should justify that claim. what damage? to whom?

I think that your comment might be the damaging one because it attempts to delegitimize the opinion of another community member without any reasons given.