this is sharp as hell.

[peter@thepit.social]

this is sharp as hell. https://karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-thing-journalism/

[regordane@mastodon.me.uk]

@peter

Even if had not included the phrase "a club of brunchlords and trust fund nepobabies", which it does...

Yeah, as sharp as hell

[vanzick@mastodon.social]

@peter is it Karl on the fediverse?

[kaidu@mastodon.social]

@peter Agree on that. CEOs are often treated as experts in the field, even though they are not. Why writing about what Altman thinks about AI and not asking an AI scientist? Why asking Musk about brain interfaces and not somebody who works in this field? Not only do CEOs often lack deeper knowledge, they also have clear financial interests. They very likely won't say the truth, but only what benefits them. It's like writing an article and citing an tv advertisement clip as source

[jerbear@kind.social]

@peter ooh, good reading, I’m going to be on the lookout for “CEO Said A Thing” pieces in the outlets I follow.

Similar vibe: https://www.404media.co/elon-musk-tweeted-a-thing/

[garthc@sfba.social]

@peter kin to “a president said a thing” which thing we already know is false.

[wifiwits@infosec.exchange]

@peter this bit “It's a sort of journalistic Ken Doll with the genitals sanded off to a smooth hump to avoid offending anyone” is absolutely spot on.

[ipngnetworks@ublog.tech]

@peter OMG yes. I ban outlets that do that.
"Elon Musk says"
"Sergey Brin opines"
"Jensen Huang claims"
"Sam Altman thinks"
"Mark Zuckerberg believes"

With the benefit of hindsight, these brainwaves are laughably inaccurate and fairly indurable.

And pretty much zero of these articles has much of any intellectual value.

It's the clickbait of the 2025+ era.

[rabbit74@autistics.life]

@peter
Parroting CEOs insults my intelligence; reflexively I veer away.

Quoting that sharp article,
"good reporting is certainly peppered in the morass"

Yeah, let's grow a list of those peppers ! --
a) Heather Richardson
b) Peace Talks radio
c) meditationsinanemergency.com
d) https://the.ink/p/stop-despairing-start-building?publication_id=70374&post_id=192080345&isFreemail=false&r=9dxl9&triedRedirect=true

#massmedia
...

[knowprose@mastodon.social]

@peter Sharp as hell.

Adding this to my hopper.

[gatesvp@mstdn.ca]

@peter the last paragraph is great and sad and so telling:

I'd end with some noble call for the U.S. media industry to do better, but it's abundantly clear they don't want to.

[jacques@mastodon.chester.id.au]

@peter similar to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_race_journalism

[gimulnautti@mastodon.green]

@peter The unit of authoritarianism is submission, willfull submission and obedience.

[opny721@mastodon.uno]

@peter once you see it, you cannot unsee

[dzwiedziu@mastodon.social]

@jerbear
This calls for a bot that everytime Musk tweets anything it will post “Musk has tweeted something probably untrue”.

(Substitute “untrue” with “racist”, “eugenicist”, “stupid”, etc. at random.)

@peter

[fedops@fosstodon.org]

@peter edge case: president said a thing. Same concept, worse effect.

[ntropic@chaos.social]

@kaidu @peter I prefer asking an expert in a closely related field, close eniugh for a decent judgement but far enough to not need funding for the thing they are commenting on.

[angelascholder@mastodon.energy]

@peter It definitely is the standard now...