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Comment by consumer451 | Hacker News Reader

In a thread here a few months back, I said that one good thing about a new social media platform was that it was full of scientists and journalists.

Someone asked, ~"what is about those two groups that you like?"

I had to think about it for a minute, but the reply was ~"neither group is perfect, but it's their actual job to find and present the truth."

I have no idea why it took me so long to realize that this is why authoritarians hate both groups so much.

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>~"neither group is perfect, but it's their actual job to find and present the truth."

And let me guess, the cops' job is to protect and serve?

The situation is both more simple and less simple than that.

Journalists and scientists effective top priority is to serve their employers. Sure they want to report the news and shape truth in the same way that cops want to catch real criminals but all of these people are employed by organizations that have other priorities that take precedence.

Authoritarians hate these groups because they're effectively a competing power center. It's as simple as that. You see the same adversarial relationship between secular authoritarians and the clergy in countries with religious populations. It has nothing to do with truth and everything to do with power. Media, religious, and educational institutions power comes from shaping what people believe, truth in your words.

you're mistaking journalists for propagandists. It's an easy mistake to do though, true journalists are rare in the world.

Scientists are a problem to authoritarians simply because they are educated and will likely refute the bs of politicians, let alone authoritarians.

Propagandists aren't the problem. The entire incentive structure of the journalism and consumer media industry (and others too, it's not just them) is the problem. These aren't people problems. These are institutional architecture and incentive problems. Look at the entire western world. We are in way deeper shit than just one political movement or one or a few leaders.

The hubris in the second half of your second sentence is chuckle worthy though.

Who would you say was a real journalist as opposed to a propagandist during the COVID 19 era? I am not asking this as a gimme but out of curiosity of who you thought was a true journalist during a time where many journalists were acting as mouth pieces for the powerful

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