Verantwoordelijke Pers
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2019–2023
0:12 · 25K views · Jul 20, 2017
A short excerpt of Noam Chomsky telling a BBC journalist that he does not accuse him of self-censorship. He argues that people who believed differently would not have been hired into that position.
HN cites it as a well-known clip on how structural incentives and hiring shape media bias without conspiracy.
5 comments from Hacker News
I think there is a theme in this thread that misses a key aspect that I think Noam put well here - this video I think the idea that if an opposing idea went to an NRA friend and offered more money, in almost all cases they would refuse because the lobbying dollars aren’t to convince but to support someone who asked believes what you do. In some cases, probably like crypto laws, a politician might think “sure I don’t care or have an opinion, you bought some donations and I don’t hate your opinion so I’ll help out”, but that is a lot different than “you pay me x and I vote y.” I think taking the agency out of the politicians hands, in most cases, is the wrong perspective.
A skeptical mind should immediately ask "wait, that sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory, am I to believe Jeff Bezos is acting as an editor for the newspaper he owns?" Which is a perfectly valid question. Noam Chomsky explains to a BBC journalist how it can be accomplished much more cleverly: this video Reporter: How can you know that I'm self-censoring, how can you know that a journalist is self-censoring? Chomsky: I'm not saying you're self-censoring, I'm sure you believe everything you say. But what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.
The point of analyzing structural incentives is that you don't need a conspiracy. Everyone involved actually believes they are fully and truthfully discharging their duties and fighting the good fight. None of them are walking around plotting how to pull the wool over the public's eyes. They wouldn't be hired if they believed otherwise; there's a famous clip of Chomsky making this point here: this video
By hiring only the like-minded, top-down decisions can appear organic. In the words of Chomsky: I don't say you're self-censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting. - this video
Even ten times that many journalists will do you no good, when what they report is filtered according to some pre-concieved view of the world (or the journalists themselves are only hired if they share that view: this video ).