catatattat

You must be living in an alternate dystopic 2020 media landscape where the problem is something else besides radical fragmentation of markets, instantaneous elevation of social media anecdotes to national coverage, and widespread agreement to disagree about matters of fact.

The one thing we can’t criticize our media for is a lack of diversity.

> Having worked at one, I can assure you that you're not just allowed to publish whatever you want as long as it conforms to basic journalistic standards or whatever.

Should this be surprising? A newspaper isn’t a blog for a bunch of journalists, it’s an organization that makes a collective effort to speak with a single authoritative voice.

That’s a far cry from all newspapers sharing an institutional perspective, though.

> (2) deeply offensive to those of us who work in those regimes

You know how sometimes someone who is A Little Too Online gets offended because they think you said a Bad Thing, but it was actually just a typo or a straight misreading, and you try to explain that they’re reacting to something you didn’t even say let alone believe, but because they have already decided you are the Bad Person they interpret that as you “doubling down“ on the bad opinion that they attributed to you, so they get even angrier and even more convinced that you sincerely believe the Bad Thing?

I mean no judgment. We all have such sensitivities. But maybe now you see how easily you can wind up on the wrong side of a public debate by searching for offense where there is in fact none.