What is this website about?
By Aidan Rodriguez-Swanson
Taking a nibble out of nonprofit culture, I decided to devote this post to my WHY. My WHY is a bit different than the about page you likely haven’t or won’t read. But if you are one of the few who decided to read the about page, kudos to you and sorry if this is a bit repetitive.
This is written well in advance of the controversial articles to come so rather than explain myself every time, I decided to make a post explaining where I am coming from with a little Q&A at the end.
There is a lot of information out there, so much information that it is often overwhelming for passive observers of politics and even for the unfortunate souls who find themselves enveloped by it. On top of the overabundance, political information typically suffers from accessibility and disingenuous framing.
Inaccessibility comes in multiple forms, it can come in the form of a paywall after you’ve read your allotted 5 free articles for a month. Want to read up on what so-and-so politician suggests for dealing with traffic? Well too bad, six articles is one too many articles for you. *just open the article in a private browser, but you didn’t hear this from me* Or maybe some information is behind the paywall of an academic journal?
Even if you could access the academic journal, the content is not easy to digest for most native English speakers who do not have a social science degree.
What about important information about imminent disasters or impacts to livelihoods, like blackouts? Yes English is the most spoken language but often official news blasts will only go out in English. Not very helpful for the non-English speakers who will be impacted and need to be informed.
There will not be any paywalls here (please feel free to donate though) and I will do my best to steer clear of needlessly technical and verbose articles. Additionally, I will do what I can to ensure that vital articles, files, etc are available in multiple languages.
Then there is the whole framing issue. This may come as a surprise to you but politics cannot be conveyed in a “neutral” manner. I’ll reserve the “How does ideology influence news?” debacle for another time, but let me give a quick example. Consider these headlines:
“Air attacks kill at least 19 at Afghanistan hospital, U.S. investigating”
“U.S. military struggles to explain how it wound up bombing Doctors Without Borders hospital”
On October 3rd, 2015 the United States launched an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan killing more than 40 people. These articles are real articles that came out following the attack. Notice any differences in how the headlines are worded? It is not even clear in the first headline that the airstrike was committed by the U.S. and “Afghanistan hospital” is chosen instead of “Doctors Without Borders hospital.”
Both headlines are accurate but which is more honest? Is the former less trustworthy because it omits some key details? Is it okay if details are omitted from the headline but are then mentioned in the story?
See the framing issue?
All I want is for you to ask these and other critical questions of everything you read.
That brings us to the point of this website. Why these topics? Why this perspective?
I wanted to provide a space that focused on topics and ideas outside of the mainstream ideology of Silicon Valley. The mainstream ideology of this area of course being neoliberalism, with an unhealthy addiction to the idea of technological innovation saving us all.
But you are probably reading this because something was said that you most likely did not agree with. So let me answer some basic questions you may have (Yes this is the Q&A portion, at least for now).
Q1. “When you were writing X article, did you consider Y?”
A. I cannot claim to know every single thing about any given topic but I do hours of reading and research for each article. I am still just one man so it is possible I overlooked something. Either way, leave a comment, @ me on Twitter, or reach out on the contact page if you think there is something that was missed.
Q2. “In X article you mischaracterized person Y, why?”
A. Just because I am looking at person Y from a different angle than you are, it doesn’t mean that they are being mischaracterized. I can understand the need to get defensive of someone you know, but take a step back and look at the context of the whole article. Are you defensive because I brought something up about person Y or highlighted a hypocritical statement that you were not aware of?
Q3. “Why are you spewing all this liberal fake news nonsense?”
A. Never, call me or my sons, liberal, ever again.
Q4. “In article X, you said Y is bad, why is it bad?”
A. I promise to do my best to devote an article to each idea considered bad. However, chances are I have not gotten around to writing the article explaining my position on the specific Y you are asking about.
Naturally, this does not cover everything nor does it address specific complaints you may have but I wanted to make it clear that a lot of thought is put into the writing and presentation of each article. I will update/refine the Q&A portion as the website grows and more feedback is received. I wanted to make it clear that my goal is to provide information about important local issues that are not influenced by any business or disingenuous politician.
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