Speaker: The economics of shit speech
55 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 Newer→ Last
-
Cracking post. Thanks.
A lot to discuss there, but let me just take one, because it's so true and it bugs me so much:
Most of the people I’ve mentioned are gifted communicators who could do so much better if they tried, or if the incentives supported them to.
If you can hit a golf ball, or play the violin, or install a kitchen, you have to do it the very best you can, or you won't make any money. Nobody wants to pay for slapdash work that is so much less than you're capable of.
Whereas people who churn out the reckons are effectively discouraged from doing better. Why pick up a good book and educate yourself before spouting? You will only add nuance and depth and fresh perspectives, and you're not getting paid for that. It is deeply ironic that the Hosking-types will often proclaim that our society/economy should reward hard work and excellence, while demonstrating neither.
The critics (and I'm one, every day) are also at fault here. We shout "Bias!" when that isn't really the point. Nothing wrong with a conservative columnist who makes me think, who challenges me in my cosy liberal comfort zone. I just can't think of any in NZ who do. Who even bother to marshall evidence and write well. Because they have no incentive to do so.
-
I am hoping it might be just a little bit injurious to Mr Hosking's ego for his ill-informed belches to be classed as something less than Premium Content. Which of course they are.
-
People who love this behaviour signal-boost. So do people who hate it.
So I had a bit of an epiphany earlier this year when I realised that my trans son was wandering past my computer quite often and reading my twitter feed. And that meant that he was in danger of seeing "LOOK AT THIS SHITTY TRANSPHOBIC SCREED I FOUND ISN'T IT TERRIBLE LOOK AT IT" from people I follow. So I said, straight out, if you do stuff like that, I'm going to have to mute you, because I cannot be a channel for him seeing that kind of bullshit. You saying you think it's terrible does not undo the damage. When you reproduce that stuff, you're just helping it hurt people.
My partner's mother is Pretty Fucking Racist. And once upon a time I would have bitched loudly about that, and reproduced the things she said. But these days? My best friend is Māori, and she does not need to hear that shit so I can feel better.
-
WH,
While it’s important to encourage high quality contributions to public space, there is a danger of preventing people with other points of view from participating in public life.
The main difficulty is that pressure groups will seek to police the rules in ways that unfairly advantage partisan political agendas. These campaigns can diminish the practical value of the freedom of expression and have the potential to damage our political culture.
I’m tentatively opposed to efforts to conflate hateful and abusive speech with ordinary disagreements about style and content.
-
I have to disagree about paying Teh Herald.
I'll pay individual journalists who don't spread shit.
I'll pay organisations who try to get it right, even if they sometimes fail.
But I'm sorry I cannot bring myself to give Teh Herald any money while they continue to spread shit.
And it's more than just the opinion writers - Teh Herald has a long history of driving conflict. Their performance as an organisation is consistently bad for Auckland and New Zealand be it weekly "buy/sell your house now" articles or outright racism.
If they could show the $5 a week was ring fenced for those journalists behind the paywall I'd be happy to pay.
Meanwhile BSA complaints and e-mails to advertisers will have to suffice.
-
I applaud your initiative wanting to point out faults that have been appearing in the media for a while now and why it has been happening, money of course. Or that it has become economically viable to go down this path.
Sure people voting with their wallets may persuade the publisher, media outlets that this isnt a viable option anymore. Tho it wont stop individuals with a distorted world view spewing up online that will take time and a much changed society.
I just wonder have those people running the publishers, media outlets become so mentally compartmentalized that when they are at work do the ideals, they must try to live by in their personal lives, get left on the doorstep? Is the only thing that will bring about a change is hitting them in the pocket?
I mean we all want to strive for a better community(I hope) Tho definitions of that vary so widely at present it is impossible to see how they will ever be reconciled. And the loudest voices are so wrong in their solutions, but so convinced of their rightness it will take a massive step down in ego to even get on something akin to a societal correction. I dont think such voices are capable of doing it.( Maybe thats just the pessimist in me speaking.)
But the problems range much deeper than in the media that is just the obvious symptom. We need to stop shying away from tackling the issues we face as societies and people. The prioritizing of the economic principle is a dead end, 50 year of neoliberalism has proved that. I just pray we are not so wedded to it that we can give it up. Again pessimistic :-(
But maybe the media is the place to start, we all want/like to communicate. Yeah so good on you. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
If they could show the $5 a week was ring fenced for those journalists behind the paywall I’d be happy to pay.
It's more that if this doesn't work they may not have jobs soon.
-
Emma Hart, in reply to
I have to disagree about paying Teh Herald.
I do too, but here’s my issue. If we end up with good-quality journalism behind paywalls, how are poor people supposed to access it? What if we risk a class-based economy of information, where the middle classes can access Matt Nippert, but the working class can only get Mike Hosking? Where the bullshit is open access but the debunking is restricted?
ETA: I'm not talking about paying for journalism if you can, I'm specifically talking about paywalls.
-
Hmm. So they're shit because retweets and so on, ... because that gets the few cents from google adds and similar.
Is it possible that the underlying problem is in fact, google and facebook have hateful, racist, anti-science promotion algorithms written by hateful, racist, anti-science programmers?
I mean, when I go on Amazon, it doesn't point me at Nazi books. Because those don't actually sell, and Amazon points me at shit I might actually buy. Where, google/youtube, points you at Nazi propaganda because ... uh, maybe google is just written by a bunch of Nazis?
I mean, people obviously like cute cat and dog videos (and also boobs) a fuck lot more than they like Nazi videos, but then youtube says you're gunna watch some Nazis now and so google pays more for that. Maybe it's not a coincidence that's driving this. Facebook obviously is at least very right wing in what it pushes, and now the global right is a bit Trumpist, you know, more problems.
-
if media publishers and editors gave the merest fuck about ethics, we’d wouldn’t have this issue.
If we accept the current market incentives are not working to fix that, let’s regulate accordingly. If a media organisation does not want to behave like a responsible corporate citizen, they should lose some of their protections and privileges. Why not beef up the penalties for breaching standards? Hire immoral shitheads as managers and it will cost you.
It’s more that if this doesn’t work they may not have jobs soon.
In the meantime, I am happily donating to professional, responsible publishers like Newsroom, E-Tangata, Scoop, and this here platform of ours. Hopefully when Granny goes bust, between them they can afford to hire the good journos from behind the firewall. Everyone deserves to feel proud of where they work.
Check out the titles it is easy to support via PressPatron if you are able to.
-
I can't work out why, if editors need shit speech to drive engagement to earn advertising dollars, they won't at some point decide they also need shit speech to tempt people over the paywall. You might want to create a chill library, but there's still likely to be a tout on the outside grabbing passers-by with hints at something they might be outraged about going on inside if they hand over the $$. And still pressure to deliver that outrage in stories.
-
Interesting tweet from NZ's go-to guy on national security matters.
Director Paul G. Buchanan will do interviews with media that do not put his quotes behind paywalls. When he agrees to make "public" statements, he means for all, not just those who can afford to pay to read them. Do not call if you pay-wall.
-
Sacha, in reply to
When the desperation hits em, after week four.
-
BenWilson, in reply to
I do too, but here’s my issue. If we end up with good-quality journalism behind paywalls, how are poor people supposed to access it?
Yes, that would be like the bad old days when they literally had to buy the paper one because that's all there was.
-
Sacha, in reply to
Libraries, coffeeshops, etc.
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
It’s more that if this doesn’t work they may not have jobs soon.
Yeah I've got that impression and it's causing serious cognitive dissonance.
-
Bart Janssen, in reply to
ETA: I’m not talking about paying for journalism if you can, I’m specifically talking about paywalls.
Exactly!
Give me the option of paying those journalists directly. I know I'm incredibly privileged to be able to afford that and I know that isn't perfect either but it's a whole lot better than a wall to keep out poor people.
-
Moz, in reply to
Libraries, coffeeshops, etc.
There’s a subtle but important difference between “you can read the one copy of the newspaper we have” and “you can book a computer to read the online copy of the paywalled newspaper”.
My local library literally has one computer that can access some of the subscription-only content, and if that computer is booked you are SoL for all the restricted subscriptions. Some of them are limited because the software that prevents copy’n’paste and printing is temperatmental, others just charge a fortune per subscribed computer (in the “200 subscriptions at a dollar a month each is a lot of money” sense)
They might grant free subscriptions to all libraries around the world, but it has to be implemented in a useful way. Not least because if they have to pay it’s not going to happen (Auckland just isn’t that important to Lakemba)
-
BenWilson, in reply to
Libraries, coffeeshops, etc.
Yes! That's where I read the paper version today. So I guess not all is lost.
I don't have any answers for the fine art of journalism. I very much doubt this is going to work out for the Herald writers, when far, far more successful newspapers around the world can't even make paywalls work. It's a bind because once you accept that it's a rearguard action, then it really fucks with any feelings that I should help to prop the thing up, right up until it dies - about 6 months from now, using maybe $30 of my money, one dollar of which will go to the likes of Keith Ng and Matt Nippert, and the rest supporting a crumbling establishment, and a scary amount of that $30 ending up in Mike Hosking's gas tank to be squirted out on cyclists.
-
Why can’t Leighton Smith just retire for good, the silly pompous old fart? I cheered when he finally retired from Newstalk but then NZME pulled a fast one on us and he got appointed a Herald columnist.
-
Bart, are you saying that you won't buy access to a bundle of great journalists because you'd prefer separate contracts for each of them?
-
I'll consider paying the Herald when they sack Hosking, Hawkesby, and the rest of their shit-posters. But I'm not giving a single cent to a company which gives those pricks money, and if NZ journalism burns because they insist on doing so, then it deserves to die.
-
But I'm sorry I cannot bring myself to give Teh Herald any money while they continue to spread shit.
Moi aussi. Their political reckons are so fucking bad, I want them to curl up and die. Which would be hard on Fisher, Ng, et al but the rest of the thing is just dross. And it's dross across the whole NZME enterprise.
-
andin, in reply to
a wall to keep out poor people.
What happens outside of this pay barrier isnt of any concern to those erecting it. They will just fuss about what goes on inside it.
Anyway Im sure they think anyone who's having "financial difficulties" has, in their minds, only themselves to blame. So they'll give Mike a megaphone to yell at the scum. -
Their political reckons are so fucking bad
I'm trying.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.