Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by makomk | Hacker News Reader

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I think a more accurate description is that the elite narrative is paywalled but the one for the proles is free - and the elite are absolutely convinced their narrative is the truth. The contents of, say, New York Times or Washington Post reporting on the state of US Covid-19 testing and contact tracing and how it compares to the rest of the world, the evidence on mask wearing, or anything to do with Trump or protests in no way resembles the truth.

Reading them leaves people absolutely convinced that - for example - the US is behind South Korea in per-capita coronavirus testing, despite this not having been true for a long time. Seriously, the number of people I've seen on here and in the Times comment section pointing to this one specific, untrue thing as clear proof Trump must've sabotaged Covid testing because there was no way that the US could have remained behind South Korea for so long otherwise was astounding - and even more astounding was the cleverness of the articles worded to trick people into believing this, or the boldness of the Times in literally printing a news headline accusing Trump of being the liar for pointing out the exact opposite was true.

I highly disagree. Rupert Murdoch is surely one of the most elite of the elites and his vast media empire has managed to brainwash certain folks into calling his vision "populism" due strictly to his outreach efforts.

It would also appear that you didn't read the article, as your point is not the topic of the article.

The article is about copyright law running counter to information accessibility, running counter to an interpretation of "freedom of speech".

The article is about economic rather than technological barriers to information sharing.

That's the problem with knee-jerk first-paragraph-read comments.

There's a reason I described the other narrative as "for the proles" and not "by the proles", you know... and the "truth" side having a business model that puts economic and convenience barriers in the way of access, so that only the people who really want to use it as their source of information and are willing to put up time and money to do so read it is a great way of turning that side into an elite thing.

Also, thinking about this some more, that particular bogus fact is probably an interesting counter-example to the rest of the article too. All the information required to debunk that claim about South Korean vs US coronavirus testing was and still is publicly available for free in English, and there were and still are really convenient sites aggregating it unobstructed by barriers like copyright. Everyone in the know believed the bogus elite-narrative claim anyway.

> Rupert Murdoch is surely one of the most elite of the elites and his vast media empire has managed to brainwash certain folks into calling his vision "populism" due strictly to his outreach efforts.

It's also possible you have the arrow of causality reversed. Murdoch's media could just be printing what that "the proles" want to hear.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the truth as presented by Murdoch's media empire is the same as the truth as understood by Rupert Murdoch.

How does it matter at all whether we're testing more than South Korea now? They did test far more at the onset of the crisis and have effectively contained the spread. We have dramatically more cases and a greater need for testing now than they do. Why would you get hung up on current testing rates when comparing the US to S. Korea? It is beside the point of who responded better. (Which they almost certainly did.)

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