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[Reelya]

It seems Sean Spicer is determined to avoid any normal media. Traditionally, AP got the first press conference question because they are a non-profit organization representing the largest chunk of the nation's media outlets, and their stories are used by everyone. It's not like they are a monopoly. They ask a single question, and that represents all the papers and news networks that subscribe to their feed. The alternative is all the papers send a guy, and fight over access.

The first ever journalist that Spicer called on was from "LifeZette". I had to look up what "LifeZette" even is. It's a far-right conspiracy theory website/tabloid. This isn't a question of who you believe or partisanship, it's about replacing educated professionals with bozos in clown suits. There was a hint of this in Bush Jnr's time (Jeff Gannon) but the Trump people are openly embracing this. It's basically like if the hospital tried to pass off the janitor as your surgeon then told you there's nothing to worry about because he did a two day "sawing bones" course. And I mean that literally. The star reporter of the Bush press corp Jeff Gannon, did a two day conservative reporting course, and they prioritized him over highly educated, experienced and respected journalists.

Why not just put Alex Jones into the press room and let him ask 100% of the questions? Spicer is basically just refusing to engage at all with anyone who could possibly disagree with him. The media open letter was correct. That strategy won't work. By not speaking, you basically give up your right to speak. Journalists will get the information they need somewhere else and those white house press briefings will just nose-dive to irrelevance. Everyone's just going to stop reporting on what's said in those because the material won't be usable or interesting.

[itisnotlogical]

I wish there was a specific legal right to not answer to journalists that could be revoked, say, if you held government office and the question was relevant through a series of checks and theoretical cases that I can't be asked to think of right now.

That's the only way I could figure it without assuming the existence of a magical non-corrupt state news agency.

[Reelya]

State news agencies can be fine. As long as they have an independent board.

Australia has the ABC, which is publicly funded, and their reputation for honest reporting is far greater than the commercial media here. In fact, the governments here are always getting angry at them for reporting too well. That's actually a good sign: when the ruling party are actually complaining about the stories that are carried on the state news agency.

Just the fact that they don't have to worry about advertisers or making money allows them to publish many more stories that question various social institutions.

[misko27]

Why not just put Alex Jones into the press room and let him ask 100% of the questions? Spicer is basically just refusing to engage at all with anyone who could possibly disagree with him. The media open letter was correct. That strategy won't work. By not speaking, you basically give up your right to speak. Journalists will get the information they need somewhere else and those white house press briefings will just nose-dive to irrelevance. Everyone's just going to stop reporting on what's said in those because the material won't be usable or interesting.

This is what I was trying to say in the previous thread.

The thing is that there is no intrinsic value to the press briefing. There's a certain level of cooperation between the White House and press: they often work at different aims, but the White House allows them to ask their own questions and hear it from the horse's mouth of the administration, and in exchange the White House gets some level of control over the narrative (whether this be through easier questions, preventing reporters from asking elsewhere, or just having the chance to say their side). But if the White House doesn't play ball, then there isn't much for an agency to lose by pissing the off. Tabloids print the things they do because they can say whatever they want, in exchange for the fact that they have no actual connections to the white house to lose! The White House doesn't worry about these guys, since they can't do much damage (or they can, but you can't control them anyway so why worry?). But if the White House doesn't give anything, then there's no benefit to the press's side in the arrangement. There's no reason for the to waste resources getting info they could have gotten from a press-release. They don't have to fear getting banned from the pressroom because nothing useful or interesting ever gets said in the press room. So now you have a tabloid-like entity, but one with far more resources to muster and standards to meet. And that can be a spooky thing for an administration, especially one as full of holes as Trump's will be.

[Reelya]

Yeah the thing is they're going to get only friendly questions asked, and they're going to be LifeZette exclusive scoops, straight from the white house! So in other words they will have given up any influence on any topic other than what LifeZette want to ask them. So they'll be talking to a very fringe audience on a website known for wacky conspiracy theories. "Elvis At My Baby" and the next story is "White House Exclusive Scoop!" I'm sure it's going to change the media landscape forever.

But the problem is you don't get stronger by never being challenged. Being able to deal with the blows uncovers weaknesses, I think you hinted at that. But if they soft-ball the whole thing then it's going to be like a house of cards. A house made of Alternative Facts.

[Reelya]

I'm watching live feeds about chaos at airports where you are where tourists and the like are being detained. This ... it's just an insane way to handle any transition. Guy's making Duterte look good.

If you're going to have such a ban the thing would be to stop approving visas, and anyone already approved gets through. Then there would be no visible disruptions, no stranded people and people who were supposed to meet friends or relatives clogging airports to point cameras at and no chaos in public places. This isn't how you do it.

[Reelya]

As one youtuber was saying, the current situation really puts the terrible plight of society's inability to take Tumblr-based transabled werewolfkin seriously into perspective. At leasts that's one thing, all those "first world problems" "identity" people (you know I'm only talking about all the white middle class ones who are picogender and stuff. e.g. a suffering minority because they're 0.01% girl) might have something external to complain about now.

[FearfulJesuit]

I'm watching live feeds about chaos at airports where you are where tourists and the like are being detained. This ... it's just an insane way to handle any transition. Guy's making Duterte look good.

If you're going to have such a ban the thing would be to stop approving visas, and anyone already approved gets through. Then there would be no visible disruptions, no stranded people and people who were supposed to meet friends or relatives clogging airports to point cameras at and no chaos in public places. This isn't how you do it.

Meanwhile, Dulles CPB has apparently lost its fucking marbles and is sending dual citizens to holding sites outside of the airport to circumvent having to let them talk to lawyers. Dearest, sweetest judiciary, send in the fucking Marshalls.

[Reelya]

Man this is one time I'm really not happy about being right.

People believed "it can't happen here". I believe this is an example of the "Just World Fallacy".

Basically JWF is a defense mechanism. If bad things only happen to bad people, then
#1 "I'm not bad, nothing bad will happen to me"
#2 "that guy who died in the earthquake deserved it, so I don't have to feel bad about it"

I wish I was making this up, but JWF believers literally think less of you as a "less worthy person" if you're struck by lightning or a dice roll goes against you. Also, they think even less of you if they are the source of your suffering (even by accident). Because it allows them to feel less guilt, if they perceive you as less of a person, all harm to you is worth less. And studies suggest these people are about half the population.

[PTTG??]

As one youtuber was saying, the current situation really puts the terrible plight of society's inability to take Tumblr-based transabled werewolfkin seriously into perspective. At leasts that's one thing, all those "first world problems" "identity" people (you know I'm only talking about all the white middle class ones who are picogender and stuff. e.g. a suffering minority because they're 0.01% girl) might have something external to complain about now.

Has anyone ever taken "oppressed" teenagers seriously? I mean, it's a pretty much universal theme at least as old as the concept of teenagers. Romeo and Juliet could be read as "teenagers overreact."

That isn't to minimize youthful angst; by nature, it's a strong, heartfelt emotion that experience will, in time, soften.

Lashing back against it is, however, a modern form of cane-waving.

[Reelya]

I don't think it is cane waving. Nobody is doing that in person. The internet erases contexts of identity, so its harder to put things in perspective. This erasing of identity is probably part of the reason for the projection of "alternate" identities that didn't really happen before (because of narcissistic urges. It's much harder to stand out on twitter compared to a local friends group), as well as over reacting to people doing that.

But when I talk about talking that seriously, we had to do a mandatory culture and media strand in my tech degree which had 6 months about postmodernism, and one 3 hour lecture of that was pretty much all about how we should take otherkin and the like seriously (with a guy in my class who's a friend asked to present some of it. he explained all the pico/nano etc genders to the whole course. Basically we got presented Tumblr identities as college-level material). So they're subjecting games programming degree-level students to this stuff as mandatory lecture material. So it feels a bit different to say nobody takes this seriously when you're in a lecture room with 200 students who are going off into various media-related fields, and the lecturer invites some weirdo Tumblr type (he's a nice guy, but he's weird. And that's saying a lot. I'm already weird enough) to present part of the lecture.

[itisnotlogical]

In an Intercultural Communications class we watched a documentary about bronies. Myself (being a 4channer at the time) and a Tumblr girl in the class joined forces to basically give a minilecture about shitposting on one occasion, and I somehow got within an inch of trying to to explain Monster Musume to the class as an example of porn with strange gender politics (submissive male main character that doesn't want sex and constantly has it thrust upon him by sexually confident women).

It was a weird time.

[smjjames]

Wait, do people seriously believe in the pico/nano genders where they're like 0.01 or 0.00001% x gender? Is that what you're saying reelya?

[Reelya]

Yes. I was in class with someone recently for two years who's totally a believer in all that.

I'm not saying it's mega-prevalent. I have no data about that. But they're common enough that me, who isn't event part of that became friends with a believer. And I'm not even friends with any Christians. So yeah, purely by chance I'm friends with more picogenders than Christians, purely from my programming class.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I never personally encountered any strong SJWisms in college, even in my interactions with the communication studies staff (who did have some of the weaker tendencies of it, in fairness), but I did once hear from someone else about an English instructor who opened her class with an aggressive speech about how she would broke no "mansplaining" from any of the male students in lecture or writing and would report violators for bigotry. So, dodged a bullet on not getting that class...