It's an article about someone's opinions about storytelling. Who cares what political team some person connected to the project was on. Are you claiming this invalidates their opinion about screenwriting?

Not every occurrence in the world needs to be leveraged to air political grievances.

>Not every occurrence in the world needs to be leveraged to air political grievances.

But the article is rich with political subtext; the idea that society is declining due to unreasonably soft-hearted attitudes towards undesirables is a fundamental anti-progressive pillar. The author is completely aware of these political lines and directly references them.

Counterpoint - why would you expect articles on a media website funded out of pocket by a hedge fund billionaire with a penchant for political lobbying to be neutral? What's in it for the billionaire?

Gasp! Billionaires! And they have their own website which people can post links to! Gasp again!

Those dastardly billionaires with their media websites.

If only I had known this website was run by evil billionaires I could have found some other website to read links people post about tech stuff.

You have added nothing of substance to the thread.

Thanks for admitting you have nothing to say; I love comments that consist of nothing but sarcasm for that reason alone.

Please continue.

Gosh, you sound like a guy with a political grievance. Why are you bringing that to a simple statement about who paid for an article?

> Not every occurrence in the world needs to be leveraged to air political grievances.

Sure. But many things do exist exactly for that purpose. So I think it's always worth knowing why something's being written. In this case, the funding model suggests that it's exactly about airing political grievances. Since you claim to care about that, shouldn't you be glad to know that may be going on here?

> Not every occurrence in the world needs to be leveraged to air political grievances.

The comments on the original article certainly appear to have taken it as an invitation to air political grievances.

>connected to the project

By "connected to the project" you mean "funds the entire thing".

Not that it matters but I was amazed to find out via your Wikipedia link that his son was a founding member of Mumford and Sons. What a strange world.

One of my fundamental questions with anything I read is where the writer is coming from, what motivates the writing. That not only helps with interpreting the work, it helps me decide whether it's worth my time at all.

I don't think that's ad hom, in that the characteristics I'm raising are relevant. For example, if I am reading an article about a company's stock, I'm not going to care whether the author's eye color is blue or green. But I will care whether they hold that stock or something related, as that's relevant to how I read the article and weigh its claims.

So you won't have a problem with people commenting this under everything you write?

"I havent heard of William Pietri before, he seems to be a San Fransisco liberal, LGBT affirming atheist and leading figure for the ADL's Online Hate Index."

If you want, sure. Whatever floats your boat.

An important difference here is that I try to have useful profiles pretty much anywhere I write. Whereas I had to look this information up specifically because UnHerd is studiously vague about all the things I mentioned: https://unherd.com/about-unherd/

I think the way you connected Unherd with Nigel Farage is a pinpointed, ill-intentioned way of disparaging a site and I think if you want to be honest, you know that's why you did it. It is pretty normal not to broadcast your source of funding for a business.

It is quite normal for journalists to disclose conflicts of interest, which especially includes ownership/funding. For example, The Economist: https://www.economistgroup.com/results_and_governance/owners...

Or Pro Publica: https://www.propublica.org/supporters

The Washington Post gives their whole ownership history, including Jeff Bezos's purchase of it: https://www.washingtonpost.com/company-history/

That these folks aren't so forthright should concern anybody. And why should mentioning Farage be seen as disparaging by UnHerd's Daddy Warbucks? He liked the guy enough to put £10 million into getting him and others on the air, so I presume he's proud of the association. It's true I don't like Farage or his politics, but that doesn't oblige me to hide the name of the biggest star of the network that is the other major media effort of UnHerd's funder.

> It is pretty normal not to broadcast your source of funding for a business.

Not only is it extremely normal, but it's also a time honored tradition in good journalism and civic mindedness. In another era we called it "following the money."

If you were to write on religion, would you find it reasonable if the religious were to simply dismiss any argument you made, no matter how correct or well constructed, simply due to your atheism?

Generally when I write on religion, I do make that clear. If some want to dismiss my views because of that, that's their choice. I certainly dismiss a lot of what religious people say, so I can hardly call it unfair.

In a world where everyone operated as you do, I don't think there would be much point in writing, as everyone who reads what you have to say will already agree with you.

Not at all. I have plenty of good dialog with people of goodwill that I disagree with. And I have time for that because I don't waste a lot of time on people who are engaging in motivated reasoning, propaganda, suppressing cognitive dissonance, disinformation, and the like.

And I'm sure you do the same. How much time do you spend in open-minded conversation with Flat Earthers or UFO cultists or Q adherents or telemarketers? I don't think there's much point in talking with people who aren't thoughtful, sincere, and at least self-critical enough to have their acts together. But there are plenty of people who qualify.