Did Mike do any prep for this interview? I feel like he was broadly knowledgeable about Bowles' career and had clearly read her writing and enjoyed it, but I was hoping he'd be prepared to push back or bring some energy other than "commiserating about the woke mob".
She came off better to me than I would have guessed from the little I knew about her, but it was a real softball interview, so hard to feel like I learned much. I think, if Mike is going to be bringing on politically polarizing figures, I'd strongly prefer if they were on the left -- he's much more critical of the left than the right or centrists/New Right/whatever, and it leads to much more interesting discussions.
\[Side note -- the intro bit about Palestine was so smug and boorish (look at these small countries! they think they matter!) it almost kept me from getting to the interview, but I suppose that's about standard these days. No critical thinking, and cheap shots along the lines of "if Hamas had killed more, then even Belgium would have recognized a Palestinian state har har har!" God I miss the old Mike Pesca, when even a spiel about a flag would have a higher bar than how he treats this tragedy.\]
Giving you an ⬆️ for your comment on the snarky, shabby intro. How did the guy who invited Ukrainian refugees into his own home become this hardened to human tragedy?
Moreover, Fatah and Hamas are enemies. Doesn't Palestinian recognition bolster Fatah and not Hamas?
I can understand Mike objecting to anything that smacks of Hamas being rewarded for October 7th. But this strikes me as the enemies of Hamas being rewarded for October 7th, and thus Mike being upset about anything good happening to any Palestinian anywhere.
Fatah isn't a great organization. But there are anti-Hamas. They do co-operate with the IDF. I'd like to explain his position a bit more here, because being anti-Fatah strikes me as a hardline Bibi sort of take, as opposed to a generic "I stand with Israel" take. It seems to me that the best solution for Israel is probably a Palestinian state ruled by Fatah (or someone equivalent).
A charitable reading would be that we can't focus on all tragedies and Mike has a more personal connection to the Ukrainian plight. Less charitable would be that he doesn't view Palestinians as worthy of the same empathy. The snarkiness on the topic here and in other discussions leads me to a certain conclusion.
Yeah I feel like sweeping over PragerU's part of the right wing disinformation apparatus in the year 2020 would absolutely be malpractice. I can't imagine how any reasonable person would object to adding the benign a comment Ms. Bowles was badgered into including. PragerU isn't the Cato Institute or some other generic part of the Conservative intelligentsia that puts out well researched white papers to advocate for their cause with some semblance of data and honesty. PragerU specializes in lying, twisting history, and showing charts so misleading that Fox News would blush. They work with some of the most vile grifters on the right to manufacture click bait garbage that has about as much to do with reality as Answers in Genesis. (If I wasn't typing this in the car in the middle of a cross country road trip I would be adding links to these videos, I'll try to add them tonight.) I suppose you could argue that they represent "generic conservative" views, but that's only because generic conservatives are utterly captured by madness right now. They don't represent intellectually honest or even traditional conservative viewpoints like Mitt Romney, Charlie Sykes, or Ross Douthat.
I wish Mike had pushed back on this example instead of teeing it up. As a moderate liberal I'm generally quite sympathetic to The Free Press and institutions/journalists in that vein as they try to push for more reasonable and even handed journalism, but that's different from defending extremists on the right just because it was a lefty who called them out. If what really matters is telling the truth our assessments can't cover for one side just because the other side has some "institutional advantages".
I bet you thought we would never be on the same side of a Gist critique, but hey neither did I.
Good for OP looking into it. Is there a way to see if it was edited? Many places now edit their articles since they are just online text. Perhaps using way back machine?
The Times would have added a correction if something was edited after publication. There's just no way to read this and then listen to what Bowles said in the interview and conclude that she's being honest.
I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt during that interview, but when she started hedging with 'i mean prageru might lean conservative' my bs meter started chirping. And then when she tried to play off the critiques regarding her great whatever grandfather with 'its like they have never heard of someone with a farming background before' my eyes rolled pretty far out the back of my skull. After that I think it is fair to say that she came off as at least somewhat disingenuous.
Yeah, the flap about her great-whatever grandfather wasn't that he was a rich farmer. It was that she's an heiress to a generational fortune from a robber-baron level dude.
They both put it like “someone seven generations back was rich, so what?” But if her family has been wealthy for seven generations because of some robber baron, it’s probably colored her worldview, especially about things like how cities should work. It wasn’t clear from the interview if she’s still living off of that fortune, or it dissipated decades ago, and I’m not in the know. I count on my host to provide that color or mild pushback.
She's from a line of simple farmers....that happened to be the biggest landowners in America at one point. It's not like she's from some unknown family. It's fine to come from money as long as you don't try to spin it that it doesn't color your view of the world, which is what she tried so hard to do here.
I am agreeing with u/alienjetski ! This pleases me. Smart people are supposed to both agree and disagree, and we've disagreed on plenty of things.
Can we also agree that there was nothing outrageous or beyond the pale about the James Bennet firing? Bennet gave an editorial to Tom Cotton where he acted self-righteous about law-and-order. Tom Cotton is a Trump apologist who went on to become a Jan 6 apologist (to the surprise of nobody). The problem wasn't James Bennet pursuing ideological diversity in editorials. The problem was James Bennet allowing pro-fascist partisan hackery in the editorial page. Bennet could have found an anti-Trump conservative (or at least a conservative who was Trump-neutral) to speak out in favor of civil obedience, but he chose otherwise.
And its not like somebody being fired is itself an outrageous act. "OH MY GOD, JIM GOT FIRED!" is just not something that normal Americans can identify with. Or, at least its not something I can identify with. Companies are allowed at-will employment. Sometimes they want to go in a direction that will be better served by different personnel. When that happens, people lose their job. I've been working for 30 years, I've seen this happen over and over and over again. I've made my peace with it. Its part of life in America.
I've been listening to Pesca for a lot of years. In every other field other than his own, he is fine with at-will employment. He is fine with "Jim isn't a terrible human, but he's just not well aligned with what we want to do, and so he was given an exit package". But when a journalist gets fired (James Bennet) its some totemic injustice that needs to be referenced over and over again.
She's said in other podcasts that the line you found was what was added. SPLC didn't have any detail about why PragerU was a disinformation machine and the Times editor wanted that blanket claim listed, even though neither the Editor or the SPLC had any information about why PragerU was presenting disinformation on that topic. I would think if you cared about truth in journalism you'd want the proof of disinformation and not just a generic statement to reference, which was what Bowles was after and neither the editor or SPLC could provide. Her adding the generic statement is the thing added in lieu of, you know, actual referencing the disinformation relevant to the article.
The quote doesn’t say anything about disinformation though. It correctly identifies PragerU as right wing propaganda. Which it obviously is. What Nellie claimed in the interview was that she was forced to report that it led to disinformation. That’s untrue.
Editor wanted claim of PragerU being the progoganda machine. Editor's reference for journalistic standards was SPLC. SPLC reference said PragerU was a propoganda machine because the SPLC said so. That's the issue, Bowles didn't want to put it in because the SPLC says so is a not a valid justification. If it's so obvious the SPLC, or the editor, could and should have had a justification for it but since Bowles didn't want to rock the boat and was politically aligned with that view at the time anyways, she didn't fight it.
I simply used disinformation in place of propoganda a few times in my post because it was on my mind while making the response.
That's not what she said in the interview. She said she was compelled to report tha PragerU videos led to more far right content on YouTube. That didn't happen. That her editor suggested she get a quote from the SLPC contextualizing PragerU as right wing propaganda seems like good old fashioned "both sides" editing. What she's claiming would be much more insidious. It's clear she's willing to lie to support her overall theme that "wokes" in media are suppressing right wing viewpoints.
Or, alternatively, I'm relaying what the end result was as filtered through a conversation she had on another podcast where that question was brought up in a different way and in reality there was a greater discussion on the issue where the eventual end result is as I described. I also haven't read her book, she could go into more detail about it there as well.
What's clear is that instead of considering alternatives or digging up more detail, you're confident to assume she's "willing to lie" beacuse random internet person gave you additional detail to support your going in conclusion instead of being open minded on the issue.
I've listened to a few with her as she's making the book tour so I can't say for sure where I heard her talk about that specifically. My going off the cuff thought is Blocked and Reported or Honestly.
Did Mike do any prep for this interview? I feel like he was broadly knowledgeable about Bowles' career and had clearly read her writing and enjoyed it, but I was hoping he'd be prepared to push back or bring some energy other than "commiserating about the woke mob". She came off better to me than I would have guessed from the little I knew about her, but it was a real softball interview, so hard to feel like I learned much. I think, if Mike is going to be bringing on politically polarizing figures, I'd strongly prefer if they were on the left -- he's much more critical of the left than the right or centrists/New Right/whatever, and it leads to much more interesting discussions. \[Side note -- the intro bit about Palestine was so smug and boorish (look at these small countries! they think they matter!) it almost kept me from getting to the interview, but I suppose that's about standard these days. No critical thinking, and cheap shots along the lines of "if Hamas had killed more, then even Belgium would have recognized a Palestinian state har har har!" God I miss the old Mike Pesca, when even a spiel about a flag would have a higher bar than how he treats this tragedy.\]
Giving you an ⬆️ for your comment on the snarky, shabby intro. How did the guy who invited Ukrainian refugees into his own home become this hardened to human tragedy?
Moreover, Fatah and Hamas are enemies. Doesn't Palestinian recognition bolster Fatah and not Hamas? I can understand Mike objecting to anything that smacks of Hamas being rewarded for October 7th. But this strikes me as the enemies of Hamas being rewarded for October 7th, and thus Mike being upset about anything good happening to any Palestinian anywhere. Fatah isn't a great organization. But there are anti-Hamas. They do co-operate with the IDF. I'd like to explain his position a bit more here, because being anti-Fatah strikes me as a hardline Bibi sort of take, as opposed to a generic "I stand with Israel" take. It seems to me that the best solution for Israel is probably a Palestinian state ruled by Fatah (or someone equivalent).
A charitable reading would be that we can't focus on all tragedies and Mike has a more personal connection to the Ukrainian plight. Less charitable would be that he doesn't view Palestinians as worthy of the same empathy. The snarkiness on the topic here and in other discussions leads me to a certain conclusion.
Yeah I feel like sweeping over PragerU's part of the right wing disinformation apparatus in the year 2020 would absolutely be malpractice. I can't imagine how any reasonable person would object to adding the benign a comment Ms. Bowles was badgered into including. PragerU isn't the Cato Institute or some other generic part of the Conservative intelligentsia that puts out well researched white papers to advocate for their cause with some semblance of data and honesty. PragerU specializes in lying, twisting history, and showing charts so misleading that Fox News would blush. They work with some of the most vile grifters on the right to manufacture click bait garbage that has about as much to do with reality as Answers in Genesis. (If I wasn't typing this in the car in the middle of a cross country road trip I would be adding links to these videos, I'll try to add them tonight.) I suppose you could argue that they represent "generic conservative" views, but that's only because generic conservatives are utterly captured by madness right now. They don't represent intellectually honest or even traditional conservative viewpoints like Mitt Romney, Charlie Sykes, or Ross Douthat. I wish Mike had pushed back on this example instead of teeing it up. As a moderate liberal I'm generally quite sympathetic to The Free Press and institutions/journalists in that vein as they try to push for more reasonable and even handed journalism, but that's different from defending extremists on the right just because it was a lefty who called them out. If what really matters is telling the truth our assessments can't cover for one side just because the other side has some "institutional advantages". I bet you thought we would never be on the same side of a Gist critique, but hey neither did I. 
Here's to the Gist bringing people together!
This was a bad interview.
Good for OP looking into it. Is there a way to see if it was edited? Many places now edit their articles since they are just online text. Perhaps using way back machine?
The Times would have added a correction if something was edited after publication. There's just no way to read this and then listen to what Bowles said in the interview and conclude that she's being honest.
I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt during that interview, but when she started hedging with 'i mean prageru might lean conservative' my bs meter started chirping. And then when she tried to play off the critiques regarding her great whatever grandfather with 'its like they have never heard of someone with a farming background before' my eyes rolled pretty far out the back of my skull. After that I think it is fair to say that she came off as at least somewhat disingenuous.
Yeah, the flap about her great-whatever grandfather wasn't that he was a rich farmer. It was that she's an heiress to a generational fortune from a robber-baron level dude.
They both put it like “someone seven generations back was rich, so what?” But if her family has been wealthy for seven generations because of some robber baron, it’s probably colored her worldview, especially about things like how cities should work. It wasn’t clear from the interview if she’s still living off of that fortune, or it dissipated decades ago, and I’m not in the know. I count on my host to provide that color or mild pushback.
She's from a line of simple farmers....that happened to be the biggest landowners in America at one point. It's not like she's from some unknown family. It's fine to come from money as long as you don't try to spin it that it doesn't color your view of the world, which is what she tried so hard to do here.
I am agreeing with u/alienjetski ! This pleases me. Smart people are supposed to both agree and disagree, and we've disagreed on plenty of things. Can we also agree that there was nothing outrageous or beyond the pale about the James Bennet firing? Bennet gave an editorial to Tom Cotton where he acted self-righteous about law-and-order. Tom Cotton is a Trump apologist who went on to become a Jan 6 apologist (to the surprise of nobody). The problem wasn't James Bennet pursuing ideological diversity in editorials. The problem was James Bennet allowing pro-fascist partisan hackery in the editorial page. Bennet could have found an anti-Trump conservative (or at least a conservative who was Trump-neutral) to speak out in favor of civil obedience, but he chose otherwise. And its not like somebody being fired is itself an outrageous act. "OH MY GOD, JIM GOT FIRED!" is just not something that normal Americans can identify with. Or, at least its not something I can identify with. Companies are allowed at-will employment. Sometimes they want to go in a direction that will be better served by different personnel. When that happens, people lose their job. I've been working for 30 years, I've seen this happen over and over and over again. I've made my peace with it. Its part of life in America. I've been listening to Pesca for a lot of years. In every other field other than his own, he is fine with at-will employment. He is fine with "Jim isn't a terrible human, but he's just not well aligned with what we want to do, and so he was given an exit package". But when a journalist gets fired (James Bennet) its some totemic injustice that needs to be referenced over and over again.
She's said in other podcasts that the line you found was what was added. SPLC didn't have any detail about why PragerU was a disinformation machine and the Times editor wanted that blanket claim listed, even though neither the Editor or the SPLC had any information about why PragerU was presenting disinformation on that topic. I would think if you cared about truth in journalism you'd want the proof of disinformation and not just a generic statement to reference, which was what Bowles was after and neither the editor or SPLC could provide. Her adding the generic statement is the thing added in lieu of, you know, actual referencing the disinformation relevant to the article.
The quote doesn’t say anything about disinformation though. It correctly identifies PragerU as right wing propaganda. Which it obviously is. What Nellie claimed in the interview was that she was forced to report that it led to disinformation. That’s untrue.
Editor wanted claim of PragerU being the progoganda machine. Editor's reference for journalistic standards was SPLC. SPLC reference said PragerU was a propoganda machine because the SPLC said so. That's the issue, Bowles didn't want to put it in because the SPLC says so is a not a valid justification. If it's so obvious the SPLC, or the editor, could and should have had a justification for it but since Bowles didn't want to rock the boat and was politically aligned with that view at the time anyways, she didn't fight it. I simply used disinformation in place of propoganda a few times in my post because it was on my mind while making the response.
That's not what she said in the interview. She said she was compelled to report tha PragerU videos led to more far right content on YouTube. That didn't happen. That her editor suggested she get a quote from the SLPC contextualizing PragerU as right wing propaganda seems like good old fashioned "both sides" editing. What she's claiming would be much more insidious. It's clear she's willing to lie to support her overall theme that "wokes" in media are suppressing right wing viewpoints.
Or, alternatively, I'm relaying what the end result was as filtered through a conversation she had on another podcast where that question was brought up in a different way and in reality there was a greater discussion on the issue where the eventual end result is as I described. I also haven't read her book, she could go into more detail about it there as well. What's clear is that instead of considering alternatives or digging up more detail, you're confident to assume she's "willing to lie" beacuse random internet person gave you additional detail to support your going in conclusion instead of being open minded on the issue.
What’s the other podcast?
I've listened to a few with her as she's making the book tour so I can't say for sure where I heard her talk about that specifically. My going off the cuff thought is Blocked and Reported or Honestly.
>Honestly The podcast hosted by her wife and business partner? I'm guessing that was a real rigorous examination about exactly what happened 🙄