--Andre Gide
Congrats on the interview [with Microsoft's Brad Smith] and sorry I didn’t have the cycles to get back to you. I definitely would have some fun ones; oh well. Between you and me, I actually have a sincere respect for Brad Smith. I view him among the best attorneys in the country, among the likes of David Boies, and hope to have a opportunity to have a beer and a laugh with him off the record some time down the road.
Likewise on perspective. I’m not emailing you because I want to make you feel bad or think that I have the moral high ground; that would be hypocritical of me. Although it’s not a competition, even on your hypothetical worst day as an "evil Microsoft shill” or whatever (kidding) you’d be hard pressed to shade out the mountain of work I’ve done for them in 10 lifetimes 🤣. I just have genuine concerns about the state of tech journalism.
With regard to criticality and while I think it’s a fundamental of journalism, I don’t think it’s definition can be comprehensive of journalism itself; only in-part. I tend to agree with you on #1 under most circumstances and as a component of journalism though. While critique is usually reserved for experts and polemicists, there are plenty of circumstances when journalists are dealing with something asinine that runs contrary to common sense and conventional wisdom and doesn’t need the same level of dignity as it’s more rational counter-argument. So far as I understand, this is especially the case when there is potential for individual and societal harm and can see this in covering involving our environmental and financial catastrophes; all of which intersect with technology; correct me if this is inaccurate.
Case in point, if I wanted to just throw radioactive waste from Hanford into the Columbia and let nature handle it, journalists wouldn’t dignify that for a moment or need an expert for a counter-argument because they know that the outcome is most likely catastrophic. There’s no, “what about all of the good things radioactive waste does in a fresh water supply?” because you know it to be universally horrible by default. The same is true for murder, war, rape, torture, puppy kicking, pyramid schemes, leaded fuel/water, CFCs, tide pods, flat earth theories, cryptocurrency, ransomware, and…monopolies by default.
Just as no one is going to argue with me about puppy kicking being bad, no one is going to argue with me when I say that competition is the single greatest consumer protection and driver of innovation and that monopolies are bad because they impede said competition. Alternatively and if I were to tell you that I wanted to run an anti-competitive software monopoly and liquify all competition, you’d also probably advise against it. This is because we all know that monopolies are bad for society by default; not good or even neutral.
Despite substantial historical precedent and no viable economic, environmental, ethical, or evolutionary model in existence advising us to meet monopolies with anything other than critique and skepticism, we can consistently find most tech journalists doing the exact opposite of this and giving tech monopolies the benefit of the doubt instead a shrewd awakening; Microsoft or otherwise. Most won’t even call them a monopoly despite their convictions; only behemoths, giants, and other powerful euphemisms instead. Monopolies being bad is especially the case in free markets that are predicated on ample competition; different in monarchies etc.
With this in mind though I can’t really go with you on #2 at least with respect to journalism and monopolies, at least in outcome. After all, what am I left to rationally infer besides something between bias, conflict, and ignorance when veteran journalists consistently do what no credible economist would do by giving monopolies the benefit of the doubt, let alone likening my stance to that of biased-overly critical for mirroring conventional economic wisdom instead of whatever fringe hypothesis they’re operating on? Or am I behind on the times and is there some emergent economic theory that exonerates monopolies from the fundamentals of economics, history, and nature? Should I also un-read Merchants of Doubt, Manufacturing Consent, and Dark Money? Is Jane Mayer and Noam Chomsky full of shit now? I didn’t get the memo?
All joking aside, I’m genuinely left scratching my head as to how anyone, journalist or otherwise, can speak with any amount of integrity on highly technical matters pertaining to the forefront of STEM without possessing significant expertise and capacity for root cause analyses among other traits obtained from the rigors of decades of engineering that naturally escape most journalists without the same experiences. While some may see it as curse, a thin veil of unbiased objectivity is all that one can rationally expect from from such a dynamic non-experts and conflicted PR people before us. Nor can I see how placing non-experts in such positions that they cannot possibly account for fully doesn’t groom them for failure and society by proxy as an unintended consequence.
As far as fairness to journalists is concerned, I also agree with you to an extent and try to be decent but thick skin is implied with journalists and if they can give it then they have to be able to take it just the same. It’s also important to remember that one must accept the very likely risk of offending a lot of people whenever they're brokering hard truths.
In present form, I honestly don’t think that most journalists are anything distinct from a coal miner from an ethical perspective. Many journalists can name countless instances where they’ve been given no choice but to treat a paycheck like an ethics waiver like the rest of us; none of which is a worthy of shame until journalists try to package every day work for integrity.
This isn’t to say that I don’t empathize with journalists at all, I do, hence this discussion. I’m sure they’re overworked and underpaid like the rest of us too. I just can’t rationally prioritize either over net effect and outcome when it comes to societal catastrophes such as big tech at the moment for which they are a horcrux of as I see it. I realize that no one set out to be stenographers for the powerful as children but it’s hard to deny that industry makes it really easy to do just that, that many end up doing just that as a consequence (I can relate), how beneficial it is for industry, or how detrimental this dynamic has been to society.
Journalists like to project that there is this code of conduct and rigorous dedication to integrity and that just isn’t the case. Sans medical and science journalists, most journalists aren’t really obligated to follow a formal set of rules like doctors or lawyers and lack the protocols to guarantee the integrity they project. Journalists can’t be disbarred or have their non-existent licensees revoked. They employ the same 1st amendment that anyone else does and are held to the same libel/slander laws when publishing as well. And if you were to ask 100 journalists to define ethics or integrity then you’d likely get 100 conflicting answers besides “I don’t know”.
I fully realize of journalists may have the best of intentions but I also realize that the road to hell is paved with good intentions just the same. Ultimately, nothing that I’m saying would offend the likes of Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader nor am saying anything that journalists haven’t already said about journalism themselves behind closed doors or even in books that both of us have referenced in this thread. So I’m quite comfortable with my views.
In all, the individual feelings of journalists, let alone journalists that were fine with doxxing me and didn’t care about my feelings, life’s work, or career, is of no consequence to me. If the truth kills them let them die. If it triggers them, then they need to get a doctor. And if they can’t handle the truth then they have no business being in journalism or any professional setting for that matter. Plus you seem to be handling the nature of this discussion just fine.
I digress, but I also realize that hard truths tend to pass through three stages. First they are ridiculed and/or labeled as offensive and treated like heresy, then retaliated against, and only after that will they be accepted as being self evident if the bearer remains persistent enough. I’ve already endured the ridicule. I’ve already endured retaliation to the point of reputation destruction and loss of my career. And if I’m not mistaken, I’m not really getting much of an argument back from you on the core of my arguments, from my assessment on Microsoft to the state of tech journalism, so much as I’m seeing you slowly accept and concede something about your industry that you and other journalists and intellectuals have been pondering and writing about long before me. I have nothing to lose by pushing this theses to their logical conclusions and plenty to gain if they end up holding true and being well received.
That said though and if you value my perspective and wish to incorporate it with deadlines and such then I think it’s only fair that you extend a formal offer to accomplish this.
Good chat!