> The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded as a private police force in Chicago in 1850, and quickly expanded its reach; its detectives initially focused on catching thieves and burglars, but soon became the bane of the labor movement for their work as enthusiastic, vicious strikebreakers. Throughout the Civil War era and in the decades after, Pinkerton operatives left their bloody mark on strikes, protests, and massacres, and gained a ruthless reputation for protecting the interests of capital by any means necessary.
> [...]
> The Pinkertons, who are now a subsidiary of Swedish security company Securitas AB, are reportedly cozying up to 2020’s version of the Gilded Age robber baron: Silicon Valley tech bosses like billionaire vampire Jeff Bezos, who has hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to reportedly surveil workers in at least one of Amazon’s European warehouses and infiltrate its worksite, according to documents obtained by the publication.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/who-were-the-pinkertons
And yes, that is a Teen Vogue link, and yes, it’s worth reading.
EDIT: This is unsurprisingly attracting downvotes. I'm curious if people are objecting to the characterization of Teen Vogue as partisan and ideological or the implication that marketing divisive ideology to children is a social ill? Or perhaps that journalism should aspire toward the truth and not partisan advocacy?
Everything is naturally biased, the only distinction is whether an entity is open about their bias. This goes for anything: whether it was the New York Times and FOX hawking for nearly every war during the 2000s, or it was Newsweek favoring MLK Jr. and Life describing his speeches with phrases like "demagogic slander" during the 1960s, everyone's naturally got an opinion. This doesn't stop applying when writing about a subject.
Granted. The extent to which journalism is valuable is the extent to which it is neutral and objective. When it abandons even the pursuit of truth, it becomes a social ill.
> Everything is naturally biased, the only distinction is whether an entity is open about their bias.
I don't think this is true on any level of analysis (though it is one of the most popular and obvious of mistruths). At the individual level, one can choose to counterbalance his biases or commit himself to them. He can choose to lean on rhetoric or reason. He can debate against his most competent opponents or he can choose stooges. He can choose between straw men and steel men. He can choose to be honest (if fallible) or dishonest.
At an organizational level, we can choose between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. We can have an ideological monoculture or a diverse culture. We can build a culture that calls out rhetoric and favors reason. The net result of a heterodox organization isn't the absolute lack of bias, but the bias is severely attenuated compared to the modern newsroom.
This doesn’t exist. I haven’t yet given up hope that it could someday exist, but as far as I can tell it doesn’t currently. Would love to be proven wrong though.
Parenti wrote Inventing Reality and Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in the 80's. Your examples of lies that that you believe demonstrate how especially bad media is today just reveal that you only notice certain exaggerations or interpretations of news that go against your politics.
I presume you think yourself unbiased too.
> I presume you think yourself unbiased too.
0/2 on your assumptions about me. Of course I’m biased; everyone is biased. The difference is that I don’t double down on my biases, but rather challenge and evolve them by reading and debating other points of view. Note that the stark contrast between that and the folks (esp in the media) who persecute others for ideological transgressions.
Even the person Damore was inspired to write his manifesto because of (SlateStarCodex) admitted it was too far.
Biased reporting isn't new, it's always been universal, and it'll never go away. You just sound like you want more conservative outlets. Here's a tip: Turn on your local news. Local news in America is almost always owned by one of three conservative companies (Sinclair and Nextstar come to mind most immediately), and all of them have an extremely conservative bent.
That's not even getting into the bias of media on scientific issues. HIV/AIDS never got proper coverage, and the coverage it did get was usually outright wrong and hostile during the 1990s. Climate change? Completely debatable! A matter of emotion! They were still pushing that up until a few years ago. Encryption? Can be government-crackable and still secure! That's been a constant topic since the 1990s, too!
https://www.vox.com/2015/3/26/8296091/media-bias-race-crime
According to a report by the progressive research center Media Matters, New York City television stations give disproportionate coverage to crimes involving black suspects.
The Media Matters study found that between August 18 and December 13, 2014, the stations (WCBS, WNBC, WABC, and WNYW) used their late-night broadcasts to report on murder, theft, and assault cases in which African Americans were suspects at rates that far exceeded African-American arrest rates for those crimes.
There's always bias. Always will be bias. The above issue was even worse in the past.
> the quality or state of being partisan : strong and sometimes blind adherence to a particular party, faction, cause, or person [0]
Didn't know that, thanks.
[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/partisanship
He's a fking vampire.
Vampires suck blood.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
"By August 29 battle was fully joined. Chafin's men, though outnumbered, had the advantage of higher positions and better weaponry. Private planes were hired to drop homemade bombs on the miners. A combination of poison gas and explosive bombs left over from World War I were dropped in several locations near the towns of Jeffery, Sharples and Blair." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
Someone else in the thread mentioned a revived push for "company towns", which is exactly what these workers were fighting against. Being fired from their company meant losing their job and their house, since it was owned by the company. Honestly, it's not much different from being fired in 2021 and losing your job and your health insurance.
No idea if it has any relation to the original Pinkerton strike-breakers, but using that name is pretty callous given its history.
What's more is that it isn't some sort of ironic twist of circumstances, it's just that there aren't a lot of organizations you can call for that kind of work at scale.
As long as they act within the law it's fair game really because it's obviously not in a company's interest to have unions.
For example on France there are unions at Amazon and they are recognised. Why? Because in law there is nothing Amazon can do about either.
This is annoying for companies but it cuts down on the BS.
The US has enterprise level bargaining (as does UK). In enterprise bargaining anything that helps workers hurts enterprises against their nonunionized competition. It's a bad system to have as a main method.
Most other countries have versions of sectoral bargaining system, sometimes with some national and enterprise level aspects. Once you understand the difference, it's easier to understand why in the US unions and enterprises have so bad relationship.
Not so amazing when you look at DNC backers, July 30, 1975, etc. More radical unions (e.g. IWW) tend to look at the 'mainstream' unions as 'bosses unions' or 'controlled opposition', and the more libertarian minded often similarly view the relationship between unions and capital as power plays by big corps to raise the 'free market' price of labor and consolidate power.
They do seem stuck cosplaying Edwardian trades union activists - instead of actually concentrating on the actual TU issues.
Their justification for this was that the strike was illegal, after Reagan himself declared it illegal via an executive order.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/05/reagan-fires-11-00...