Newspapers risk forfeiting decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas

[GoodTaste]

Does " Newspapers risk forfeiting decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas" mean " Newspapers risk losing rights of making decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas"?

It is still not fully clear to me.

================
Steven Pinker
@sapinker
·
1h
Sociologist Bradley Campbell, who researches the Culture of Victimhood, notes the prescience of my article with Pamela Paresky, Nadine Strossen, and Jonathan Haidt.

Bradley Campbell@CampbellSocProf
· 18h
May 14: "Unless the Times reverses course, we can expect to see more such mobs, more retractions.... Newspapers risk forfeiting decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas to outrage mobs..." @PamelaParesky, @JonHaidt, Nadine Strossen, @sapinker (1) https://politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/14/bret-stephens-new-york-times-outrage-backlash-256494

 

[GoesStation]

There's no suggestion they could lose the right to publish anything. I've highlighted parts of the sentence to show how the words fit together below. Does that make it clearer?

Newspapers risk forfeiting decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas to outrage mobs.

Never put a space after an opening quotation mark. It always goes immediately before the first character in the quoted text.

 

[GoodTaste]

So it is a structure of "N loses A to B"?

 

[jutfrank]

Yes. (If I understand you correctly.)

The idea is that newspapers could lose their freedom to publish controversial views, under pressure from outrage mobs.

 

[emsr2d2]

Does "Newspapers risk forfeiting decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas" mean "Newspapers risk losing rights of making decisions to air controversial or unorthodox ideas"?

Almost all your threads involve quoting something so you must learn to get the spacing around the punctuation right. Don't put a space after opening quotation marks and don't put a space before closing quotation marks.

 

[Tarheel]

There seems to be a typo, and it should be outraged mobs.

 

[GoesStation]

There seems to be a typo, and it should be outraged mobs.

No. The author is complaining about mobs that, in his opinion, use outrage to manipulate their targets; hence, outrage mobs.

 

[GoodTaste]

Almost all your threads involve quoting something so you must learn to get the spacing around the punctuation right. Don't put a space after opening quotation marks and don't put a space before closing quotation marks.

That was a copy-paste error, not an intentional space I left there. Like you, I've always made efforts to correct it. But when time was tight, I would forget to wipe out the annoying wrong space.

 

[Tdol]

The outrage mobs will decide, not the editors.

 

[GoodTaste]

No. The author is complaining about mobs that, in his opinion, use outrage to manipulate their targets; hence, outrage mobs.

So "outrage" here is a noun?

 

[GoesStation]

So "outrage" here is a noun?

Yes. It's an attributive noun modifying mobs.

 

[Tdol]

https://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/noun-as-adjective.html

It tells us which kind of mob.

 

[GoodTaste]

https://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/noun-as-adjective.html

It tells us which kind of mob.

In the link page, it says:

We can use a noun as an adjective when it precedes a noun that it modifies; a mountain bike is a bike designed for riding up mountains. 'Mountain' functions as an adjective modifying the noun 'bike'. The second noun takes the plural form, while the first behaves like an adjective and consequently does not, unless the word is normally used in the plural (sports hall) or refers to people (women footballers).

Does "behaves like an adjective and consequently does not" mean "behaves like an adjective and consequently does not (behave like an adjective)"? It is not understandable to me.

 

[GoesStation]

In the link page, it says:



Does "behaves like an adjective and consequently does not" mean "behaves like an adjective and consequently does not (behave like an adjective)"? It is not understandable to me.

No. It behaves like an adjective and consequently does not take the plural form.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

So "outrage" here is a noun?

I see a verb. Campbell thinks that newspapers should be able to outrage mobs. That is, they should be able to anger people.

As a noun, outrage wouldn't diagram right. As an adjective, it would have to say outraged, and there would have to be a verb in front of it, like insult outraged mobs or excite outraged mobs.

A better word might have been enrage: Newspapers should be able to enrage mobs.

 

[SoothingDave]

There are mobs. They thrive on outrage. They are outrage mobs. The newspapers are not enraging or outraging anyone. (At least not on purpose.)

 

[GoesStation]

There are mobs. They thrive on outrage. They are outrage mobs. The newspapers are not enraging or outraging anyone. (At least not on purpose.)

Right. Outrage mobs are cut from the same linguistic cloth as cancel culture.

 

[jutfrank]

I see a verb ... As a noun, outrage wouldn't diagram right.

It's an attributive noun, modifying mobs. It seems you're reading the word to as an infinitive marker (to outrage), but actually it's a preposition, with outrage mobs as the prepositional object.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

Right. Outrage mobs are cut from the same linguistic cloth as cancel culture.

I've never heard either expression. But I just Googled outrage mob, and the term does, indeed, exist. It's a kind of mob. In fact, it sounds like an outraged mob, but if people don't like the d, so be it.

Anyhow, now I know. Thanks!

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

There are mobs. They thrive on outrage. They are outrage mobs. The newspapers are not enraging or outraging anyone. (At least not on purpose.)

I get it now. I'd never heard the expression outrage mob. (See #19.)

I've seen plenty of papers stir people up intentionally, so it made sense to me as a verb.