Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wanderinghogan 156 days ago
I suspect tens of millions of Americans believe whatever they are told by their trusted "news" source. My only basis is anecdotal though, a dozen or so "maga/trump no matter what" family members and people I grew up with are mostly believing the tariffs are something other countries are paying the US.
2 comments

FOX News, after their scandal with Dominion, should have been broken down or even shutdown.

They deliberately disinformed the public, there is blatant evidence that the news anchors were aware that they were lying. Not just bending facts a little or opining, but knowingly and purposefully lying.

The pretext of freedom of expression, and more narrowly freedom of press should not *continue* to apply to businesses/individuals which are found liable/guilty of such destructive behavior for the society they operate in.

The same should apply to people like Alex Jones, you had your chance to use freedom and you have wasted it, move on to another profession.

Rupert Murdoch is personally responsible for incalculable harm to prosperity and democracy across the West.
Oh the Murdoch Empire is a more than deft hand at escaping any meaningful comeuppance. As I recall, in a court case brought against them by Prince Harry, they just folded and accepted they were guilty.

I believe that admission was because ending the trial and eating the judgement, was less damaging than allowing the light of discovery and trial ingress into their workings.

People love being lied to like that, though.
Can you stretch your imagination to a scenario in which a hostile administration, eager to shut down critical reporting, might declare that various outlets are engaging in fake news and must thus be shut down? Let's be glad a precedent wasn't set.
While I do agree with you (and unlike the other reply, I want to acknowledge that this bad-faith kind of thing happened with Louisiana declaring law enforcement a protected class), my hope was that this would have happened via Dominion's civil lawsuit, which could have been structured to name anchors & reporters individually as well as the larger Fox News organization.
Afraid of precedent? Your comment gave me a chuckle, but not in the way you think.
I can, and I've specifically said "guilty/liable", meaning that people will go to the highest court available to them to defend their rights. If in the last instance they are still found guilty/liable, they should suffer the consequences I've mentioned. These legal decisions, by multiple courts/juries, if you can't trust them anymore you have already lost in terms of democracy/republic.

I still believe the SCOTUS is trying to uphold the principles in the Constitution, for now. And there are already limits on what one can say in public, yelling fire in a theater when there's no fire is not far from what FOX is doing. Lying at this scale to cause panic based on such lies has demonstrable deleterious effects on society. The effect is delayed due to the scale of the target groups, but the principle is the same and courts/juries are able to observe this when it happens.

> still believe the SCOTUS is trying to uphold the principles in the Constitution, for now

Republicans on court are very clearly pusuing agenda that has nothing to do with that.

I agree some of their decisions are politically biased but they have taken some decisions against Trump too. It's clearly unbalanced, and that's mainly because Republicans used every dirty trick in the book to prevent Obama from picking a Justice he was supposed to.

The upcoming decision about tariffs might flip me completely on this issue, I see zero legal reason for global tariffs to be within the power of any individual, including the President. If the Court presents any argument in favor of them, I don't think I will consider it legitimate anymore.

"Yelling fire in a theater" was the reasoning used to shut down anti-war protesters 100 years ago and, IIRC, charge them with sedition. It's not a good example.
If you are alluding the Holmes’ judgement, he spoke not simply about free speech, but about actions in service to a market place of ideas.

His argument was in defense of the process to uncover truth.

Given that Fox has clearly said they cannot be taken seriously, and that they were from inception created to muddy the waters and wage war for political gain, they are an enemy to the process that was envisioned back in that era.

If someone is demonstrably selling false goods, and multiple sources have evidenced this, as has a court of law, should that all be dismissed because every single individual in America has not taken the time to look at the evidence?

At some point you abdicate roles and responsibilities to others, so that they can do the job of ensuring that a fair debate takes place.

You forgot the /s
“people who disagree with me must do it because they are stupid and/or manipulated”

It’s true on its surface - most people don’t know about economics, across all political spectrums, and so rely on leaders (which I thought is what liberalism advocates for?).

It’s not a helpful model if you want to understand what’s going on. So then the interesting parts to explore are the reasons they want to believe it, and the reasons given by the educated economists who also support the position

Let's keep in mind that a tariff is, by definition, a tax that is paid by an importer to their own government for importing some good.

> the educated economists who also support the position

> the tariffs are something other countries are paying the US

I'm quite sure the provided definition of a tariff is accurate. Given that, who are these economists and what are the reasons they give for supporting this belief that the exporters (other countries) pay the tariff?

Is your position that nobody educated in economics would ever support a tariff?

edit: in the context of giving good economic advice.

My position is that nobody educated in economics would believe that a tariff is something exporters from other countries pay the government of the importer's country.
> if you want to understand what’s going on

Funny how the in-depth analysis of motivations is strictly in one direction, ratcheting the Overton window forever rightward.

On one hand we had mountains of articles about "economic anxiety" & "The MAGA next door" in 2016. On the flip side is "Fuck your feelings" and never a "humanizing, fish out of water" longform article about the life of a Democratic Socialist in a small Texas town after Biden 2020.

I disagree with your perceptions about media bias.

I’m not telling you it’s a moral obligation to understand. It’s in your interest.

> It’s in your interest

Explain. Hopefully with details on how that tactic was utilized by the most politically effective group in the US in the past 50 years - the Heritage Foundation.