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[scriver]

Also the Netherlands. And Finland.

...Mire counts as a kind of swamp, right?

[Frumple]

Nah. Accurate or not, swamps are hot, other swamp-like things that aren't, aren't swamps. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

[Egan_BW]

All this shows is that people on Twitter are, by and large, idiots.

I could tweet (if I used that abomination) "I like pie." and I'd probably have a dozen or more responses calling me a cake-raper.

Well, at least it's not like most other places on the internet, where you could claim that water is wet and get called a cake-raper.

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah, it's the NYTimes and Washington Post that are left-wing (more center left, but they both do have their conservative journalists and op-eds) and the NYPost and Washington Times that are right-wing. Though NYPost is more gossip/tabloid.

Calling the NYT center left, even in a parenthetical, is a pretty far stretch.

Calling WaPo center at all is just flat out ignorance.

Or maybe I just want to believe that they're center-left

WaPo despises Trump and they know their readers want more Trump stories.  If you asked me a year ago if WaPo was center-left, I'd have said yes easily.  Now... they're almost a single issue publication, at least in the politics and opinions sections of their website.

[RedKing]

WaPo's always been focused on what's happening Inside the Beltway. Not sure it's their fault if Trump dwarfs (or becomes part of) every other story going on in DC politics these days.

NYT, by contrast, has to have a bit more national focus.

[Helgoland]

Wait, NYT is not center left? I always thought they were held in high regard, journalistically if not politically, by pretty much everyone who should be allowed to vote... IMO a publication is no longer centrist when a significant portion of the reading populace consider it a propaganda machine instead of a news organization.

[Egan_BW]

Wait, NYT is not center left? I always thought they were held in high regard, journalistically if not politically, by pretty much everyone who should be allowed to vote... IMO a publication is no longer centrist when a significant portion of the reading populace consider it a propaganda machine instead of a news organization.

This would make every american publication not-centrist. Which is about right, really.

[birdy51]

It's hard to be centrist when the president is a nutbag. When the president is against common sense, it would only make sense that any man with a rational brain would be inclined to write dismissively of him.

[Frumple]

Like. What are you calling significant portion, here? Because I'm pretty sure you could dredge up at least a good 15-20% of the population more or less saying that about any news outlet in this country, up to and including the AP which basically everyone else ultimately gets most their junk from.

And ninja'd a bit, but yeah. Good chunk of the stuff's honestly pretty close to what would probably be considered centrist in europe, but... we've had a fairly dedicated campaign aiming to fuck the credibility of our news going for the last decade or three or somethin'. Chunk of the country trusts nothing a different chunk does, and vice versa.

... though it's not exactly a same on both ends kind of thing. One of those chunks puts a good deal of trust in sources descending from limbaugh's style of "reporting". Which is birdy's mention, yes. Bah.

E: You kinda' have to remember that the current atmosphere for that kind of thing has like a fifth or sixth or summat of this country calling explicitly literal facts, straight up politically unrelated information, fake news. It's possibly not the best heuristic :V

[Reelya]

Wait, NYT is not center left? I always thought they were held in high regard, journalistically if not politically, by pretty much everyone who should be allowed to vote... IMO a publication is no longer centrist when a significant portion of the reading populace consider it a propaganda machine instead of a news organization.

nyt tends to sound a lot more nationalistic when it's foreign policy matters, especially latin america-related, e.g. their almost blanket ban on mentioning UNASUR / the South American version of the E.U. after it was actually ratified. Just before that the attitude was like "oh look what they're doing, they're trying to consolidate into a regional bloc, it'll never work those pesky brown types never stop bickering, isn't it cute?". But as soon as the thing actually got ratified and progress started, nytimes basically put out a moratorium on even mentioning Unasur, it doesn't get a single hit in nytimes articles for 4 years after the union was ratified. nytimes basically decided you "needed to know" nothing about Unasur in those 4 years, yet you needed over 1000 "Kardashian" related articles in the same time period. Don't fuck with me about "real journalism" here.

Basically, nyt writes for the liberal-minded end of the corporate class. e.g. people who work in mainstream corporations but aren't conservatives. nyt represents the interests of that class, and they tend liberal. However ... that type of liberal self-interest often ends at the border, and thus you get nyt also being dismissive of political developments in Latin America, and focusing on the negative only. This is the realpolitik.

[Frumple]

Though mind there, it's not like nyt is special on that front. Basically all the news in the US ignores anything not negative south of the border, and often enough barely pays attention even to what is.

[Reelya]

the thing is, you only get negative news about Latin America and no news on how much progress there is behind the scenes. e.g. colombian death squads and venezuela collapse, but no news on UNASUR, CELAC and how basically war between Colombia and Venezuela/Ecuador was pretty much certain in 2008, cheered on by Bush (with the USA media strongly backing the Colombia side and cheering the war drums), but the basically everyone else on the continent formed a military alliance to stop Colombia, forcing Colombia to do a 180^o change on their foreign policy, much to the annoyance of the USA who were pouring over $1 billion a year into a Colombian military build-up.

UNASUR more or less stopped that 2008 war (Colombia had already bombed Ecuadorian territory and the Colombia/USA media were accusing Ecuador/Venezuela of being terrorist-states in an effort to legitimize an invasion) by making it clear to Colombia that if they attacked Ecuador and Venezuela they'd be at war with Brazil, Argentina and Chile as well. Meanwhile, the USA wasn't damping down, they were cheerleaders for the war effort. Effectively, this was huge egg on the Bush administrations face in terms of US influence in Latin America. no wonder the US press doesn't want to focus on this whole deal.

UNASUR is a merger of two rival regional blocs, Mercosur and CAN, both of which were strongly promoted by the USA, in the interests of "stability", and kept at each other throats. When they decided that this was a bad idea and they should just have a single bloc, suddenly America is like "pfft I don't think so! Go fuck yourselves". Which should tell you what the real priorities here are.

Later, CELAC was an expansion of UNASUR with 33 nations. Every nation in the western hemisphere except USA and Canada was invited. And who spearheaded the union? Venezuela (read the wiki page), who are apparently feared and hated by their neighbors, except ... when they suggest forming a union and excluding the USA from that union, literally everyone on the continent jumps in and signs the agreement. Other Latin American nations had the choice 5 years ago, to pick Team USA or Team Venezuela ... and they all decided Team Venezuela was more palatable. What does this suggest about how the USA is viewed in Latin America? But this is not palatable to the US public so you won't read about it in the mainstream press.

[smjjames]

Not surprised at how the US is viewed in South America, given our history of treating the western hemisphere as our personal stomping grounds, and we still have that attitude.

[nenjin]

*ship*

Wasn't part of America's rationale there that we needed to oppose anything that vaguely smacked of communism? Not saying the US hasn't both simultaneously abused and dismissed Latin America as it suits its needs. But I seem to recall thing was more of a referendum on how palatable Latin Americans found Geo-political identity associated with socialism vs. the continued support of the US and big western capitalism, and America was agitating for war so Venezuela's socialist policies didn't start taking root in other parts of LA.

That's all probably absurdly reductive.

[smjjames]

*ship*

Wasn't part of America's rationale there that we needed to oppose anything that vaguely smacked of communism? Not saying the US hasn't both simultaneously abused and dismissed Latin America as it suits its needs. But I seem to recall thing was more of a referendum on how palatable Latin Americans found Geo-political identity associated with socialism vs. the continued support of the US and big western capitalism, and America was agitating for war so Venezuela's socialist policies didn't start taking root in other parts of LA.

That's all probably absurdly reductive.

That was our rationale, yes, but we still treated South America/Latin America like crap for the most part. We treat them better these days, but we still have the attitude of "This is our sphere of influence! Obey us! We feel like we can mostly do whatever the hell we feel like doing!" and Trump's remark about using military options on Venezuela only reinforces that kind of image.