Comment by Bubble_Pop_22 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bubble_Pop_22 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Journalists, government officials, enforcement agencies are not separate from society, they are embedded within it.

Some social movements develop and the person which is perceived as the leader of that social movement becomes popular. And with popularity come free passes.

Now a smart person will make sure not to use free passes because they know that the populace is fickle, their infatuation too shall pass and as soon as it does pass then the backlash is going to be 100 times worse.

So if they do any media they'll do their best to put a stop to the ass-licking in order to make sure that they'll not be using a free pass.

Then you have those who don't care and instead try to accumulate as many free passes as they can, say because they are old and are projected not live to see the crowd turn against them, or for whatever reason.

Luck is also important. Take Nixon and JFK. One conspired against his opponents and the other stole Illinois. Both are very serious crimes, only one got to live to see the truth uncovered and crowd turn against him, the other is hailed as one of the best Presidents.

So the defense is no longer "the journalists were afraid of getting sued" but rather "the journalists like access." Access which affords them money and power.

That is as I already assumed. How is that any different from a bank robber excusing himself by citing the utility of money?

You don't get it. It's not about journalists vs. non-journalists.

It's about skeptics vs. easily indoctrinated.

Thankfully the proportions are about the same, there are about the same quantity of skeptics as well as easily indoctrinated people among every profession. including journalists. Skeptics however are a reationary bunch they show up with some delay compared to those who are easily indoctrinated.

Also skeptics tend to criticize from 30,000ft whereas easily indoctrinated people have a deep need to elevate a guy and blindly follow him. Journalists who are skeptics were criticizing the whole crypto movement, whereas journalists who are easily indoctrinated were busy elevating SBF, CZ, Musk and every other cult figures in the space.

That's the reason why you can't find skeptical articles on FTX and SBF, the skeptics did not write pieces on that, they were writing pieces critical of the whole movement, whereas easily indoctrinated journalists were low-key intersted in the movement but what they really wanted was to blow SBF, Musk and CZ.

I suspect this has always been the case, but we apparently had enough journalists on various teams that someone would smell a scoop and dive in.

But I think that was mostly just a myth even in the "bad old days" of yellow journalism and newspapers making it big by exposing scandals. Maybe the increase of advertising revenues compared to subscriptions is involved, but deep down people are people and people are manipulatable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com