Yes, if both management and the union say there wasn't a job action, there probably wasn't.

The Washington Examiner seems to be one of the parties that made this up.[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-airlines-shou...

This rag specializes in misinformation and fake news.

> if both management and the union say there wasn't a job action, there probably wasn't.

This is just making an uninformed opinion based on the apparent factional interests of an organization.

Both can have an interest of denying it. For example, management don't want to scare off investors and stocks to go down and it is not in the interest of the union legally to admit that it initiated such a collective action, especially while they are in court for a case relating vaccine mandates.

It is also fair to doubt what is officially said given deceptive claims that the weather caused them to stay grounded even if it didn't affect other airlines and that airliners fly above most adverse weather conditions.

Weather regularly grounds airlines - the problem is not weather in flight, the problem is weather at specific airports, and with how southwest flight graph is constructed the knock on effects can be huge (it's also why in hub-spoke setups you have huge investments into making hubs capable of dealing with extreme weather)

Which still doesn't explain why other airlines operating at these ports didn't experience this kind of large scale disruptions and why no weather maps were shown (as far as I know) to back up these claims.

Other airlines were disrupted, but not to the same level, due to different level of dependance on said stop. The second most affected airline IIRC had Jacksonville as minor stop, and out of all impacted, only Southwest used what they call "line flow" flight planning. Which results in Southwest being the only one to end up with stuck planes that were supposed to service a many routes way further away.

Most low-cost airlines operate on a sort of "distributed hub-and-spoke" (many small hubs instead of one/few big ones), with plane going bidirectionally on a route to non-hub airport before any route switching happens. This means that so long as the "hub" isn't severely impacted your disruption is somewhat contained and you still have access to a fleet of planes&crews that can be reassigned. A pattern like this:

  H->A->H->B->H->C->H ;; H = "Hub"; A,B,C - spoke airports

Disruption at A,B, or C doesn't block unrelated flights, only disruption at H.

Southwest instead flies like this

  A->B->C->D->E->F->G

If B is in any way blocked, flights B->C, C->D, D->E, E->F, and F->G are all going to be disrupted, possibly without replacements plane/crew combinations available. If the disrupted airport has a lot of overlapping "lines" like that, the disruption quickly turns catastrophical.

Also, appears that at least some approaches were manually vectored recently at KJAX, which isn't fun if there's a shortage of controllers.

Weather maps don't show unusual adverse weather conditions. Other didn't show apparent impact, even lesser. Face it, it's not the weather.

Because it was not just weather. It was combination of weather with low staffing of local ATC and disruptions to flight patterns. Weather is just one of the triggers.

Which would have impacted heavily local airlines too, which didn't happen. Also again, weather maps do not lie.

I'm seeing on twitter a lot of reports of cancelled flights for American Airlines today (200+ cancelled, 500+ delayed).

I saw one explanation (no idea if it's true) that individuals were taking sick days because their banked PTO wouldn't get paid out if they're terminated on Dec 8 because of the mandate. So not a "sick out" that's organized, but possibly a lot of employees just taking their 'paid vacation' while they still can.

> I saw one explanation (no idea if it's true) that individuals were taking sick days

Good news! If you actually read the article, you get information like:

“Nothing like that is true,” Jordan said. “We didn’t see sick leave beyond normal. In fact, we saw our crews picking up open time to the extent that they could.”

RTFA: it’s better than random Twitter speculation. I mean, yeah, it’s about Southwest and not American, but it’s hard to see why pilot behavior would be different.

That doesn't seem to exactly contradict Covzire. Covzire was talking about vacation, while the quote is mostly talking about sick leave.

They're saying they took sick days instead of vacations.

That's entirely about sick leave.

I think I misunderstood, but my main idea might still stand. Some companies treat vacation and sick days as the same thing, and put them in the same bucket called PTO. Some companies separate them. I'm not sure what Southwest does. If Southwest separates them, then labster's quote could be true while simultaneously a lot of employees are out on vacation days due to wanting to use them up before quitting.

Covzire was claiming without any proof whatsoever that they saw "lots of reports on twitter."

Some have also claimed that PTO's are the precursor to likely (mass) resignations too.

Who? You need to include sources when making fantastic and difficult to independently verify claims. Otherwise you’re just spamming propaganda.

It doesn't matter. What mattered is it sparked my curiosity in knowing more, above and below my immediate reply as well as the rest of the comments in this post, however true or false they are. Everyone goes somewhere and I (try to) go where they've been with some DYOR.

Some things I never knew until recently:

- PTO isn't federally and legally required yet most companies do it

- Some states have some influence on PTO policy

- Southwest Airlines is a Texas-headquartered company

- Because of claims that MSM are either incompetent or narrative-driven, secondary and tertiary conjectures leading to this headline should be considered as well

- Lastly, a visit to Wikipedia yielded this line:

> If PTO hours go unused, employees may sometimes call in sick near the end of the year so they can obtain the benefit of paid leave before it disappears. Employers may counter this tendency by paying employees for some or all of their unused days at year-end or upon retirement or resignation.[1]

PTO is a form of compensation. Every place I’ve worked at has paid me for unused, accrued PTO when I left. But I’ve also never been terminated, so don’t know if that matters.

I've worked in places that do pay unused PTO and places that don't - all in the same state. My experience is paying it out is less common.

Unused PTO must be paid out in many states and in states where it is not legally required it is generally still required if the business has historically done it. Beyond that, Southwest pilots are unionized. No sizable union would allow separation without PTO payout.

Unions are for people in the Union, aka the people still working there, not for those getting fired with cause (failure to get vaccinated). This sounds exactly like something a union wouldn't care about.

What are your credentials for telling us things that unions do and don’t care about? What unions are you in? What direct experience do you have with how unions decide what’s important to them?

This is definitely not true.

Unions absolutely negotiate separation terms, etc.

Some states require this, some don't.

>But instead it seems as if disinformation is spinning current events to change perception about the Executive's new policy. Sadly, even after it's fact-checked - people won't remember the fact that it was bogus nor will they count it as a strike against the source that reported it.

What might help us remember is to name and shame the people responsible. Ted Cruz claimed to have heard this from multiple people including the leader of the union who you quoted denying it.

Some politicians are bulletproof to "name and shame", their supporters will even blank out or excuse away that they did something shameful...

Because if those supporters admit (ultimately to themselves) that the people they voted for were cheap scammers, how does that look on their self-belief that they're intelligent people? They'd rather twist reality to not shatter said self-belief.

If you look at the polling for all these “bulletproof” politicians, most of their supporters recognize that they’re dishonest. It’s about tribal identity and pissing off the other side.

I will never understand the career of Willie Brown. Literally hundreds of fake mayor jobs, many of which were assigned to mistresses, massive theft of public funds, legendary and brazen corruption, and yet he's still a well-loved figure.

For those unfamiliar with this [1] politician.

Interestingly, Willie was also in a romantic relationship with now Vice President Kamala Harris prior to her political assent.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Brown_(politician)

That Kamala was involved with him is remarkable only in that usually Willie was seen with a tall, leggy blonde, so she wasn't his type.

Most of his mistresses he would find government jobs for -- when he was speaker of the house, Willie had over 1000 full time "aides", but they weren't primarily mistresses, most were pure political patronage positions, to keep the power base growing. Brown was in absolute control of the Assembly,

"In many ways, the Speaker of the Assembly, in pure politics, may have more power than the Governor. . . . Willie has an awful lot of power, and none of the headaches of being governor. Ed Meese Chief of Staff to Governor Ronald Reagan, 1967–1975"

To understand how he ran things, just imagine a pyramid of patronage with Brown on top:

The party cost $250,000 to stage, but not a cent came out of Brown's pocket. Brown raised the money from corporations, trade groups, and others with business in the Legislature. The food and booze also came free of charge: California wineries delivered a truckload crammed with one hundred cases of wine. San Francisco's best eateries, the finest on earth, provided delicacies to match. "I am hell-bent on enjoying every minute of my life," Brown proclaimed in an interview with GQ magazine. "So I do not mistreat myself. I make very few sacrifices. I live my dreams."

Not everyone was impressed with Brown's stupendous excess. David Roberti peevishly stayed away, giving his ticket to a Burbank city council-woman. The prickly Senate leader was in a snit over Brown listing himself on the invitation as "Speaker of the Legislature." Roberti fulminated that the Legislature had two houses and Brown was Speaker of only one. "You should bill yourself accordingly," Roberti huffed in a letter to the Speaker.

Roberti was technically correct; Brown was the leader of only one house of one branch of state government. But nobody that night cared about Roberti's civics lesson, much less his pride. In the world of politics, there really was only one Speaker of the Legislature, and that was Willie Brown.

He was the most powerful politician in the Capitol, and arguably in the entire state. Willie Brown was more than that; he was the P.T. Barnum of California politics, the best show in a state that relentlessly produced bland, blow-dried political leaders.

Brown's flamboyance, however, hid another reality. The bashes were one more method for Brown to spin his web of power, tying other politicians, interests groups, campaign donors, and power brokers to himself. Lobbyists, corporate executives, and union officials paid for everything so that they could don a tuxedo or a formal gown and rub elbows with Brown and his friends.

Brown was allegedly "treating" them to his party, and everyone played along with the facade. The end result was the same. Those who wrote checks expected, and got, the attention of the Speaker and a place at the negotiating table when the party was over. Brown got their money and used it to fuel an election machine that kept his friends and allies elected to the Assembly. His friends, in turn, kept him elected Speaker.

The whole edifice was based on a simple principle: keeping Assembly members happy. As long as Brown could keep forty-one members happy, he could remain Speaker. As long as he was Speaker, the checks kept coming, and Assembly members remained happy.

"Don't ever misread me—ever," Brown once said in the middle of a challenge to his leadership. "I always have forty-one votes. Always." Few understood or appreciated how accurate he was.

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft0m3n...

After he was term limited out -- and that proposition was basically written against him (which is why it also reduced the number of "aides") -- he became mayor of San Francisco and got a reduced allotment of about 100 mayor appointed positions and that's where Kamala came into the picture, no doubt working it to get a position in the DAs office. But in fairness to her, it would be hard to get any valuable position in SF unless Willie signed off.

Look at any notable CA politician and they are one or at most two steps away from Willie and his machine. They all owe Willie something.

When it comes to playing politics, Brown’s protégés learned from the best. In Sacramento, opponents complained he routinely flouted conflict-of-interest laws, representing clients who had business in the capital, but FBI investigations went nowhere, earning him the nickname “Slick Willie,” a moniker Brown wore proudly. He also called himself the “ayatollah of Sacramento” — vote with him, and you were rewarded with perks. Cross him, and you were banished to a basement office. Brown’s escapades were so infamous that, after meeting Brown in 1992, future president Bill Clinton quipped, “Now I’ve met the real Slick Willie.” https://www.marinatimes.com/dpw-boss-mohammed-nuru-finally-s...

For a long time, almost nothing happened in California that he didn't have his hands in, and a good chunk of what did happen was used to either line his pocket or cement his power, and sometimes both. Brown would find a way to do both with remarkable ease.

The position of SF mayor was almost retirement for him, and it came at just the right time, when the city was booming with dot-com money, going on a building spree, and Willie set up a special power group consisting of the city's biggest tech companies that he would meet with -- something like the old Phoenix Forty, in order to keep the gravy train going. My guess is that a big reason why SF became popular with techies is because of Willie wrangled them to increase office space there. In the beginning, all the tech was in sunnyvale/MV, and didn't really go up to SF. SF was where the techies would drive to in order to party on weekends, but the office was a big campus in Santa Clara county. Willie played a big role in changing that, as well in remodelling the cap on city hall, emblazoning it with gold (probably brass, but the symbolism was clear - gold rush!).

Here is a pic of Brown and his Fundraiser (who became baby-mama in 1999):

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/LOVE-AND-MONEY-Mayor...

But his current gf is Sonya Molodetskaya, however at this point I'm not sure she does more than keep him warm at night, like King David in his twilight years. Sonya became a fasion icon in SF and I think became an editor of some magazine, but not sure.

https://heavy.com/news/2019/01/sonya-molodetskaya-willie-bro...

In dot-com 2.0, sniffing opportunity again, he also ended up on the boards or as a paid consultant for some of the ride-sharing outfits.

I remember seeing Willie a few times when he was mayor. He would spend a lot of time attending high class parties or driving down market street or some other notable street like Haight in his limo, with the Brioni suits, a cigar, and the current blonde. Music blasting, sometimes talking to people out of his limo. Also known for the hats. It was like a cartoon.

But the guy has a joie-de-vivre and fantastic political instincts. He knows the system better than anyone else, and played it like a fiddle. And the machine he set up is still going -- if you want to build something or bid on something, you better pass a white envelope to someone who owes Willie. That machine will keep going long after he's dead. Last I checked, he had his own column in the Chronicle, "Willie’s World", doing political commentary.

The FBI has tried multiple times to hit the machine. Once during the "shrimp boy" scandal, they got a wiretap and recorded some of the conversations by the officials:

"You got to pay to play here. We got it. We know this. We are the best at this game … better than New York" https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/in-shrimp-boy-drama-connecti...

But nothing ever happened except a few low-level officials. And after the election of 2020, no more indictments have been handed out. Willie Brown wins again.

https://www.marinatimes.com/the-city-family-is-a-machiavelli...

https://www.marinatimes.com/cronyism-is-still-alive-and-well...

This is totally and completely off topic.

'dissent' is an antonym of assent. I think you mean 'ascent', like you do on stairs.

Yep. Was on mobile. Looks like post is locked now. Thanks for clarification.

Some of the scams are still ongoing, to boot.

Bingo. Slick Willie was 99% into self-dealing through one hustle or another, yet few figured it out.

Some of those jobs went to people who now have power, former mistress with some such job is now Vice President. So no surprise in there.

That’s not why. Better your cheap scammer than your enemy’s anything.

Ted Cruz won his last reelection campaign 50.9% to 48.3%. with the supposed mass influx of people from California I'd say he's anything but bulletproof.

The people moving from a blue state to a red state because they feel the people running the blue state screwed up are going to keep voting blue? I've never understood that logic.

Presumably there are people in the world with a finer-grained view of things than "blue" and "red", such as centrists, people sympathetic to progressive social views but not a fan of progressive economic views, people hurt by Prop 13 in particular, etc.

(It is certainly possible that such people are working to improve their home state and the only people actually moving have a dualistic view of politics, though.)

The politicians who had progressive social views but who were not in favor of progressive economics are long gone from the political scene. There are only red and blue left. Witness the demise of the Blue dog Democrats with one vilified exception.

Eh. I suspect besides housing prices, a significant amount of people also move to Texas because of political preferences. Also according to exit polling (as unreliable as it can be, so take it for what it's worth), Beto O'Rourke actually won the native Texan vote over Ted Cruz.

Can we name and shake the politician I’m the White House that said that vaccinated people can’t get Covid? While we are naming and shaming, let’s not forget the one that deserves shaming the most for spreading that ridiculous lie.

What about whataboutism?

You cannot use an argument of whataboutism in politics (well, you can, but it doesn't have any effect). It isn't applicable in any way. It just establishes that one bad deed doesn't excuse another.

But in a political context when the topic is mutual standards of behavior, it can be justified because that overrides the determination if an action is ethical or not.

On the contrary it can be abused as a rhetorical trick to only let objections be permitted if the sender is flawless if the accuser takes the lead in pointing out mistakes.

Source on this?

One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. Disinformation abounds and lies or lies of omission should be expected from anyone in a position of power and influence.

> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe.

While I do think that things wrt 'discourse' have gotten worse, I don't think that traditional news agencies are untrustworthy. If they are, then they're as untrustworthy as they've ever been. As long as you avoid sources like opinion-shows-on-'news'-channels and stick to the dreaded "Mainstream Media" you should find trustworthy reporting.

"Mostly peaceful" killed that for me. I wanted to believe what you're saying, but I can't anymore.

“Polls in summer 2020 estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in U.S. history.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests

Given the sheer scale of people protesting they were, by all reasonable definitions, mostly peaceful. When news reports prefer to show things like broken windows and trash cans on fire, but it’s impossible to show 15 to 26 million people spread across 50 states, emphasizing that the protests were mostly peaceful and the violent images are the outlier is responsible journalism.

The journalist is literally standing in front of a burning building: https://youtu.be/igzNAzcXNBA

It’s totally fair to lose faith after seeing that.

> It’s totally fair to lose faith after seeing that.

Nah, not IMO. The video you linked to has the reporter claiming that the current state is "in stark contrast" to the day's earlier protests.

BTW, the term that I stated originally ("Mainstream media") may include CNN but it also includes AP, Reuters, and many more press agencies that are much more dignified. CNN used to be 'headline news' but has transformed into the same nonstop opinion shows in order to compete with Fox. So it's not the best source IMO.

But don't lose faith. Don't base things on the worst example. Instead judge Mainstream Media by the NYT, Washington Post, Reuters, NPR.

I’ve lost faith, it’s too late for that. Reuters and AP seem to play it straight. NPR I’d say is somewhat biased, not really at the facts level but in the way stories are framed. NYT is a hopeless lost cause. WaPo, I have no opinion on, I don’t really read them much.

Over 80 people killed during the summer of love but January 6th was an "insurrection"?

You mock yourself if you are sincerely defending this crap.

It’s the MSM showing you a video of a burning building. Why does that cause you to lose faith in the MSM when they give you video evidence of what’s happening?

We had video evidence of those Convington kids and then found out the part shown was a section that didn't tell the story. Video has been shown and edited a bit too much lately. It's not the shown video but what isn't being shown that is often the problem.

"Mostly peaceful" said the reporter, in front of a burning building.

Context matters.

They were showing the anomalous situation, and giving an overview for greater context.

Reporting only the former, or only the latter dissociates the two. This was clearly establishing and acknowledging context for the extreme outlier of the situation being pictured.

But you’ve already made up your mind, I suppose, and no amount of logic or reason will bring you back.

If you want me to believe protests are "mostly peaceful" then don't report in front of a fucking conflagration.

Furthermore - and there's no nice way to say this - why are people so dumb as to believe news outlets as if they're arbiters of the truth? As if they were the very Ancients themselves from the Stargate universe, descended down to enlighten us all with zero self-interest?

The New York Times COMPANY. A COMPANY. Owned by a trust-fund jackass who inherited it from his great-great-great-however-many-times-grandfather.

CNN, owned by Turner Broadcasting Company, owned by WarnerMedia, owned by AT&T... the same AT&T that's lied about bringing fiber to America after getting how many billions in tax dollars for the past 36-something years from Congress?

How deluded do you have to be to think any of these outlets are being even remotely objective about "The News"?

They pander to your goofy asses, and you consistently believe them. CNN is no better than Fox News is no better than MSNBC is no better than <insert here>.

EDIT: You're not goofy, guys... you're just honestly fucking gullible and dumb if you believe any of them. You're being sold a story - a worldview compatible with whatever bullshit you want to believe. It makes me sick that people can't or won't be honest about this.

Yes, optics matter and this was one of the worst among them.

But you didn't have to go all the way back in history though. In my opinion, CNN's trope of succession is largely forgotten today in this specific journalism-is-dead context but unless "hackers" have been living under a rock for the past few years, pointing this out is far more important than continuing to cherrypick out the headlines. Remember when HN was all about punk/hackers culture from two decades ago? Times have certainly changed.

I have seen more humanity in people than I would normally expose myself to but more about those caught in the crossfire. Two examples I can think of was the story of a Seattle security guard snatching away a rifle from a group of rioters whom freshly pillaged a police car and, an urban explorer vlogging his departure from Seattle as a result from the protests.

Security guard -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXoGzJZw4Z4

Vagrant Holiday -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUO8secmc0g

Somewhat related -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZPgz5T7PXI

And you don't see a problem with the passive voice either ("Fires have been started")?

It’s the spin, the contrast between what’s on the screen and the commentary about it. It causes me to lose faith in CNN as an unbiased source. Doesn’t apply to all MSM, but it’s a data point.

That is fair and logical take. But if the protesters had been wearing red caps, people would be defending a fair and logical take in the press that they were cover for violent riots and looting.

I'd be more interested in data a few years from now to show if protesting really did anything? Obviously this is a right we must protect and embolden, however for certain causes protesting in this day and age seems to do little to elicit actual political action or change - sometimes it even does the opposite.

Protests in the late 90s brought visibility to issues, AND had a clear ask to the public.

Today people protest to just being visibility. But they have no ask or strategy on how to resolve the underlying issue.

The lack of a clear ask on policy change is likely why many recent protests haven’t accomplished meaningful policy change.

I couldn't agree more - I think the number of pervasive narratives accelerated by social media (with almost zero backing in data) are also a factor here. For instance, I support reducing emissions and fossil fuel use, but I find it a bit nuts when Gen Z claims "the world will end in 12 years" without offering any real path forward other than "fuck anyone who disagrees".

Sure a head count of all protests from the whole country buries the problem from view. Using this logic Jan 6th was peaceful.

The problem is they mentioned protests, not protestors. The more relevant way to look at it is how many protest events led to rioting as it progressed?

You are letting a clumsy chyron that did a bad job summarizing an accurate report sour all of journalism for you?

You are structuring your argument as if it was a one off and not a culminating crescendo for some people. News have been getting progressively worse over the past few decades. This just happened to be a very clear and visible sign, because it is just hard to find something so visibly wrong.

The other poster was framing it as an inflection point and I was questioning that.

Also the chyron wasn't truly wrong, it was summarizing a report about what transpired over 24 hours. The protests were "mostly peaceful" until they weren't. That was all discussed on screen while the chyron was displayed. The only way to be misled by the chyron was if you were watching the channel on mute or you just saw the screenshot flying around the internet being pushed by people who wanted you to think the media is lying.

The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted. If this is journalism's worst crime, then we are in fantastic shape.

It is not the worst crime. It just happens to be most visible, because it gives the appearance of consciously creating a narrative that fits specific needs ( in simple terms : BLM good / police bad ) and is then reinforced by semi subtle, but still clear signals ( if race is omitted in a shooting, you can at this point assume the shooter was/is black ).

That is the issue, it is not one clumsy comment. It is a series of million little moments. They do add up.

>it gives the appearance of consciously creating a narrative that fits specific needs

If this was the goal, why would they report the truth audibly while lying to you visually?

That is the point you are missing as it evidence that the chyron was clumsy rather than nefarious. You don't report two conflicting narrative if your objective is to get viewers to believe only one of the narratives. If the goal was to mislead, they did an awful job at it by telling the truth in the actual reporting. The people who want to mislead are the ones who took the chyron out of context of the report it was summarizing.

"If this was the goal, why would they report the truth audibly while lying to you visually?"

It is possible I have it reversed in my mind. Lets look at the picture at hand and see if we can agree what it represents[1].

[1]https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/27/cnn-chyron-on-kenosha-f...

Tell me what you see in this image?

To respond to what I think you are saying. Maybe the senior lead thought reporter could do better job on his feet and gave him a shot. Live riot. You will need to take some chances and see how they play out. Poor guy was clearly not ready for prime time.

>Lets look at the picture...

>Tell me what you see in this image?

This is exactly my point. Why are you only looking at a picture? You should also watch the video. Remember CNN is a TV channel. Their primary product is video. They are working to convey information through video and not an out of context screenshot.

Do you think the reporting is misleading after watching that video? The reporter specifically mentions that the scene behind him is "in stark contrast" to the "largely peaceful demonstrations" from earlier in the day. The video is clear and truthful. The chyron tries to summarize that but doesn't do it properly resulting in the bizarre and dystopian screenshot. That screenshot is not an accurate representation of the report it accompanies. That is the failure. There is no reason to assume that failure is malicious rather than accidental.

>To respond to what I think you are saying. Maybe the senior lead thought reporter could do better job on his feet and gave him a shot. Live riot. You will need to take some chances and see how they play out. Poor guy was clearly not ready for prime time.

Also a quick side note, you seem to be suggesting that the reporter wrote his own chyron. It was almost assuredly written by some producer who was probably in some office hundreds or thousands of miles away. The reporter on the scene did a fine job.

CNN clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klVhCkhOTRQ

You are right. Live video is less clumsy. The caption still breaks it, but that is not reporter's fault.

So now the question becomes whether the caption is misleading.

Misleading can have an implied motive. I said that the chyron was clumsy in my first comment, so I agree it is bad and should have been clearer. However we have nothing to suggest that that was purposeful with an intent to mislead. It can just be someone making a careless mistake.

Also now that you recognize the video's message is clearer than the single screenshot, I would ask you to consider why you have primarily seen the screenshot. Is that maybe because the people sharing it are doing it based on their own biases and motives rather than the merit of the report itself?

Oh, there is zero doubt about that part. The moment this video showed up, it was like Christmas in July for the right side of the political spectrum in US. What you call careless mistake, I see as the problem with modern journalism. It does not even need a spin. You just show one frame and meme theory will take care of the rest.

The chyron combined with the reporting that night could have been inserted into a dystopian movie with little to no editing.

> The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted.

I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. When your job is literally not creating awful visuals, you can't use that defense. There was a clear message being projected, and that was that the violence was good, and you really shouldn't pay attention.

>The chyron combined with the reporting that night could have been inserted into a dystopian movie with little to no editing.

What was inaccurate about the reporting that accompanied that chyron? They specifically said it was peaceful during the day until nightfall and that is when violence started. That is perfectly inline with the scene behind the reporter. The only problem was the chyron.

>I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit. When your job is literally not creating awful visuals, you can't use that defense. There was a clear message being projected, and that was that the violence was good, and you really shouldn't pay attention.

No one has ever made a mistake at their job especially when they are doing it live on television in a stressful high pressure environment? This is classic Hanlon's razor. And as I said in the other comment, there was not a "clear message projected" because the audio and text messages conflicted with each other.

The message of "violence is good" also aligns with the robotic use of "mostly peaceful" throughout the media and the strange empathy TV people had for Antifa. Your interpretation is an accurate read of the sympathy the news has for BLM and others.

A person can argue that World War II was mostly peaceful. At any point of geography, it's quite rare that artillery shells are falling or tanks rolling through. Usually it's a quiet garden spot.

The fact is, the BLM protests were mostly peaceful. They were almost entirely peaceful. But that's not how we expect the news to cover any event that includes rioting or looting. We expect the news to lock on to the most sensational parts, however insignificant, and talk endlessly about how terrible this is and how BLM organizers should feel some responsibility for this. That's what the news would've done in any other circumstance. That's what it would have done for BLM in decades past. That's what it would have done if BLM had endorsed Trump. But because of the weird and universal sympathy news producers have for BLM, the protests were covered differently.

It's the cherry on top.

Between cherrypicked statistics, obvious and tremendous political bias (Both sides, but we all know which one benefits more), a complete abandonment of balanced coverage, and tinting the faces of politicians to make them appear less healthy (happened to Trump and Bernie), I'm just about done ever trusting any mainstream media source again.

When Ben Shapiro's news website does a better job of admitting their own biases than any of the three-letter networks, we have a problem.

"Fiery but mostly peaceful"

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-for-...

Ditto.

It was the news moment I realized:

The Emperor Has No Clothes!

The NYT just overstated the amount of COVID infected by 800,000.

800,000! How many people only saw the original article and not the "correction". This happens ALL the time.

An even better perspective from someone who is NOT a conservative: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/10/11/continuing-biza...

If you aren't looking at the traditional news with a skeptical eye, you are getting an extremely filtered and heavily slanted view of the world.

This whole mythos of journalism being unbiased is a recent fabrication. Look how many newspapers across the country had "Republic" or "Democrat" in their mast head. Bias was expected - and proudly advertised. Far more refreshing than the games currently being played by the "traditional news" organizations today.

The contents of reporting by the mainstream is largely accurate. Ask any seasoned journalist and they will tell you that story selection is a big answer for how bias makes its way into any publication especially the respected ones.

The only other caveat with the mainstream news is that they often behave like stenographers for “anonymous sources familiar with the matter” who often is an insider with some sort of agenda.

You must have missed the year 2020

What makes you put your full trust in the mainstream news? What makes them more trustworthy in your opinion and safe?

This is exactly the strategy adopted by the GOP in the runup to 2016 and onwards. The exhaustion is the point. Literally just lie and keep lying until most people tune out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

Thanks for sharing. I thought this wikipedia article was really interesting and it led me to this other article [1] by Bruce Schneier about how to combat the firehose, and one by RAND [2] (which IIUC is the genesis of this 'firehose' term).

[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-ki...

[2] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

your tribalism is showing

Your unwillingness to see that the GOP is in another league than the Democrats on this front is showing. As someone sitting outside both camps, you can't really "both sides" this one.

> the GOP

True but trending that direction for a long while. I feel like one person in particular really gave them a leap forward and had been a blatant liar his entire life. Anyone care to guess who?

Hillary Clinton?

My point being is that both sides are full of liars. They're politicians, they're famous for it

If we’re being honest, citizens want them to lie to some extent. The want a visionary president to say they’ll fix all the world problems in a way that is acceptable to their voters. The voters completely ignore than no one person can do much of anything. They will be at the mercy of the government process and the people within. All with competing objectives. But, when asked during a debate, what will you do during your first 100 days in office, you can say “it depends” which would be the honest answer.

That said, lying and weaponizing misinformation are two completely different things. Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. Trump lied every single thing. This is the guy that drew over the Hurricane map because he knew better where the hurricane was heading. When you apply that alternate reality to things like questioning the election results and whatnot it’s quite a different level of dishonesty.

How can any serious person compare the level of honesty between the two?

More importantly, in this political environment, people are voting against candidates, not for them.

Any view of Republican voters as a personality cult misses that conservatives have spent decades in hold-your-nose-and-vote mode.

> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe

That, largely, is the intent. "Some people" know that the more they poison this well the more people like you will then throw up their hands. And, while I'm sure you aren't one of them, most of them will then take that as a license to believe the source they want to believe and not the one telling them the truth.

And the frustrating thing, of course, is that the disinformation is largely asymmetric. One "side" of sources is more consistently wrong or misleading, and one mostly gets it right with the occasional mistake. Also, one "side's" thought leaders tend to parrot disinformation[1] more than the other, where you tend to see the worst whoppers primarily among the ground troops only.

[1] Ted Cruz pushed this particular meme, for example.

You have this whole other side where it is obvious both sides are misleading because to have a side means you are determined to spread and grow that side.

This president is sharing as much disinformation as the last president as much as China and as much as European and Canadian prime ministers. If you are only seeing the other side doing this you may be too close to one side.

How can you look at Trump's former twitter feed and say that with a straight face? If your argument is quantity of disinformation, Trump spread more disinformation on twitter in an average month than Biden has done in the first 10 months of his presidency.

Here is a list of Biden's lies over the last 10 months. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/591...

Which shows you everyone is lying to you no matter what side you are on. Better than the other guy means you are still being fooled. Rep and Dem are two sides of the same coin. It reminds me of a Simpsons halloween episode where the Rep and Dem candidates are replaced with two Aliens and when the truth is uncovered voters were stuck with a choice between an alien Rep or an alien Dem who would enslave all humans or voting for a human third party candidate. The ending scene shows humanity enslaved with Homer saying he voted for the other alien.

If this is your bar for dishonesty - which is basically lying by omission, mischaracterization or stretching the truth and not telling bold-faced lies - then this list doesn't even begin to compare to the former executive's near-constant deluge of outright falsehoods, told in explicitly bad faith.

That's a nice opinion piece you have there. Honestly that was just a whole gish gallop by someone with an extreme bias. I don't personally like Biden, but that was a terrible article.

Its also an effect of people getting news from social media and free websites. The journalists used to do this but all got laid off.

The union says there's no strike, the airline says there's no strike, no other airlines experienced similar failures despite similar mandates, and there's an alternative explanation that fits all of the available the evidence (and there's a lot of public evidence since these are domestic commercial flights). Additionally, people who want to stir up FUD about vaccine mandates have an incentive to lie.

So, one possibility is that there's a fast conspiracy that involves NOAA, the FAA, Miami airport admin, air traffic controllers, Southwest, the pilot's union, etc.

The other possibility a few conservative commentators are talking out of their ass.

Sorry... this one just isn't that hard.

Agree, but why hasn't anyone asked the pilots?

The pilot's union is on the list I gave.

Aside from the union: because Southwest employs 8,500 pilots and they're not exactly all on linkedin or something.

You're just misinformed and wrong.

The union and airline say there's no strike or sick out (job action) because strikes and job actions are illegal under the Federal Railway Labor act. They are unsurprisingly denying doing anything illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board

Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE

That explains why the union would lie. Why does it explain why the airline would also cover (lie) for them?

Refunds. If flights are cancelled for pretty much any reason aside from weather the company is on the hook for hotel rooms and refunds.

The union and company are merely denying that they have done anything illegal. Not surprising. Pilots strikes have to be approved by the National Mediation Board. Any job actions including sick outs are very illegal. The last time a major airline had a strike authorized it lasted for 24 minutes before they were ordered back to work by President Clinton. The media have done an atrocious job covering this story. Gell-Mann amnesia is in full effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board

The first 7 minutes of this video are very relevant to the Southwest situation.

Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE

How can something be “very” illegal? Either it’s illegal or it’s not. Please note inserting qualitative modifiers like “very” indicates that the speaker has no actual evidence for their stance and subconsciously use words like very to build confidence.

The distinction I was making was between laws that are enforced an those that are not.

As someone that has been involved in political events, sometimes this could be an agreement to avoid more damage to the company. The truth usually doesn’t come out unless there is a leak.

I personally know of several pilots who are using up their sick time in anticipation of a showdown over the vaccine mandates.

Southwest has been running with a pretty shallow pool of pilots for some time, and COVID made the problem a lot worse. Furthermore pilots who opted (or were opted) to idle have to be re-certified before they can rejoin the pool of active pilots and training is overwhelmed and backed up.

Juan Browne does a much better job than my ham fisted attempt - and a WAY better job of going into detail than this superficial article too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO39nIcuPhQ

BTW he is an active commercial pilot so he knows a bit of which he speaks and isn't just scraping content from elsewhere and resummarizing.

From by the submission a few days ago, this comment linked a substack that claimed they couldn’t make it an official union action because it was about the vaccine mandates.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28825929

This source does not seem like a credible one. If someone who has some real stake to lose by reporting unsubstantiated claims makes this kind of a report, I would have an easier time believing it. But this is just some website that I didn't know existed before today.

It could just as easily be some bogus report on Blind or any other anonymous site and I would have just as much trouble believing it.

Think of a million other news reports you have heard where a union or CEO makes claim X/Y/Z and a news agency refers to a specific individual (or airs an interview with a disguised voice/appearance individual) who contradicts those claims.

Alex Berenson is famous for lying and distorting facts [1] [2] [3], so frankly the fact that he's claiming this makes me less inclined to believe it.

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-...

[2] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/alex-berenson-attacks-...

[3] https://reason.com/2021/08/30/alex-berenson-twitter-ban-vacc...

Berenson rightly called the vaccine efficiency drop with actual data and was castigated for it. These outlets are more fixated on character assasination rather than hash out his arguments because that's so cool nowadays.

It’s not about being right. It’s about being right for the right reasons.

If you make a million predictions one of them is bound be true. Just because you’re the first to predict one thing doesn’t mean that everything you say is true, or that you shouldn’t be criticized for jumping to conclusions.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/pandemics-...

If it was a sickout why was only this company affected? The mandate was federal.

I guess the same reason not every union simultaneously opposes every policy?