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pyrrhus's avatar

When you add to the bias the overall stupidity and lack of work ethic, the result is utter trash, even on apolitical subjects...,My wife and I, both employed by large companies, have had inside knowledge about a number of business subjects and controversies...The press reporting has never gotten any of them right...and frequently reported as fact the exact opposite of what was actually going on...A recent example would be the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity, which clearly restricted it to official acts, with guidelines..Most media claimed it made the President "above the law", whatever that means, which it emphatically did not....

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eugyppius's avatar

stupidity is totally correct. in my academic life I had occasion to give a few interviews to journalists, or to watch them report on developments in my field. what emerged was always so wildly distorted and incorrect, as to beggar all belief.

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pyrrhus's avatar

In my day, respectable universities didn't have journalism majors...journalists to be took English, history, etc...

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

One of the more annoying parts of reading MSM articles is that they never, ever begin with a description of the salient, pertinent facts. They bury what facts that they do report way below the fold, and then, nearly every time, the list of facts are reported incompletely by the writer (usually it's the most desired fact that is left out) or, as you say, the facts are reported utterly incorrectly.

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Steghorn21's avatar

Yep. Here in Switzerland, the papers are all leading off with how "fascism" is returning to France after the Le Pen victory.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

They said the same thing about Giorgia Meloni. She's now the least unpopular leader of the G7- everybody else in office is deeply unpopular with their electorate.

As an interesting sidenote, there is plenty of speculation of romantic attraction when Milei met Meloni!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q9NLa_XFfk

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Steghorn21's avatar

She's the least unpopular rather than the most popular. She's only that because, no thanks to her, the Italian economy is doing rather well. She also broke her promise to sort out the immigration problem.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

Like burying the fact that the woman who violently murdered an innocent person was actually a transwoman, two paragraphs up from the end of the story?

Or how they always say an extreme weather event 'may' be related to climate change, when the headline suggests climate apocalypse?

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

Yes. The one that annoys me the most is when there is an explosion or a shooting and a perpetrator is in custody and the reporter refuses to provide any background information on the perpetrator, especially his name, religion and national origin.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

Did you see the Ann Coulter clip on Bill Mahler? Don’t get me wrong, he’s the type of fluffy liberal I want back- free speech and willing to call out lunacy on the Extremist Left (if totally TDS), but man is he clueless on a lot of issues.

Remember when he thought Dennis Prager was talking bollocks? He’s taking it seriously now though, isn’t he?

The media actually covered the Cass Report in the UK, but, other than a few Leftie newspapers (surprisingly the Guardian) the WPATH files were largely ignored. I think a lot of it stems from the dread fear that people might read some of Michael Shellenberger’s work on climate. I’m a lukewarmer myself- most of the effects of CO2 increases have been largely positive thus far, and if one inputs a reasonable model of economic growth into the Nordhaus DICE model out to 2100, maximum temperature change including all thus far, works out at around 2.5C.

SMRs are going to change everything, and there’s some really interesting work being done in agriculture relating to nitrogen retention which could massively increase yields. Check out nitrogen fixing corn.

Actually I’m really pissed off about SMRs. I got itchy fingers about investing in Rolls Royce given the acceptance that many of the supposed alternatives are now accepted in institutional circles to be insufficient to the task. But I didn’t do it!

I found out the other day that share price growth was 530%!

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Geary Johansen's avatar

What put me off was that there are about 80 current competitors in SMR development.

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JonZig's avatar

Maybe a sure sign they can’t tell the truth, or it’s a difficult task.

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Compsci's avatar

Don’t leave out a refocusing of the journalist ethos of, “who, what, when, why, where, how”, style reporting to what’s known as “advocacy” journalism reporting. The latter not grounded in the truth so much, just the ends.

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Justin's avatar

FEEEELings.... Nothing more than FEEEEEELings....

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James Dawson's avatar

The five W’s are simply Op/Ed now.

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Maenad's avatar

Journalism was once a working class trade. Fill the ink pots, run copies, hang out and sniff out a story, make friends with cops and lowlifes for scoops, and most of all, intimately know your neighborhood and all the players to make sense of it all for other working slobs, keeping the grifters in check with threats of exposure, ridicule, and shaming. (Printers were once the trivia buff fact checkers extraordinaire.) An absolutely essential part of good governance. Without them we got this.

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Barekicks's avatar

Reading a book about precisely this called Flat Earth News.

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Rosemary B's avatar

agree, my brother aspired to be a journalist, but when my dad offered him one of the best universities in UK, he thought it was too hard. Quit, took a trade job.

Now, however, he just spouts off the usual lies.

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Barekicks's avatar

I have a friend in the UK who is working class but excelled at school. Did a law degree at a top uni then decided to do a master's in journalism. Wrote for law journals, then became a legal reporter, then moved into the business desk at one of the major broadsheets... But eventually all the papers cut many of the proper reporter positions.

So now my friend mostly writes columns and op-eds -- mostly from his home office -- and what can I say? Years of being in an industry that became increasingly wokified got to him. His pieces are pretty banal.

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Compsci's avatar

It really all boils down to the level of the “audience” doesn’t it? We are simply no longer smart enough, nor consequently educated enough, as a society to develop the critical thinking resources needed to filter the general misinformation being fed to us through the MSM.

Indeed, there are psychometricians who toss out the entire concept of IQ in favor of testing and evaluating one’s “critical thinking” skills as a better predictive measure of superior intellect and societal success. I’m thinking they have a point here—especially when I read a bunch of back and forth commentary such as this coming from academics and highly successful people rather than the more common average “person on the street”.

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Oregonian's avatar

One must include multi-generations of State education which serves to legitimize the state, State orthodoxy, and state-approved beliefs. One cannot expect state employed functionaries to teach critical thinking, especially in regards to State politicians that public teachers and their unions helped to elect. Add to this that in the USA teachers are most often people who chose soft comfortable stable careers with little required analytical thinking, and the result is a population taught conformity, security, obedience, and following the authority figure; with no options for self reliance, self responsibility for the first 22 years of their life.

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Steghorn21's avatar

Also, it's simply the fact that 70%+ of humans throughout the ages have never had an ability to think critically. And to be fair, we all have our blind spots.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

There's actually some pretty good evidence for that. It's called solution aversion. Basically, the only difference between a smart person and an average person when confronted with information they don't want to hear, is that the smart person will come up with a longer list of reasons for discrediting the information.

There is also expertise blindness. Highly educated people trust information from experts on the assumption that because they come from a similar background and class, they couldn't possibly have any ulterior motives for lying!

The prime example would be Fauci.

Finally, there is the hubris of intelligence. Smart people conflate general intelligence with specific knowledge. Knowing a little bit about risks as a concept, teaches one nothing about the problem of probability and impact. It's why all our leaders borrowed heavily when interests rates were low, and now that central banks are trying to enforce the Philip's Curve delusion, many countries are stuck with debt servicing levels higher than the military budget.

The real shit of it is, the market could have solved the problem. When interest rates are low, so is risk and it's worth investing in capital expenditure to automate away crappy jobs. That's one of the really smart observations of Austrian economics. Although the nice neat equilibrium of neoclassical economic theory may be generally true, there are plenty of specific exceptions where smart entrepreneurs are able to innovate their way into success. It's where most of the creativity in an economy comes from.

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MarcusBierce's avatar

I would argue that humans in general do not understand our own nature: a mixture of common sense and common good. That is… logic and social harmony.

Without understanding the friction between these two truths, one can barely grasp what is going on in the various systems within which we’ve imprisoned ourselves.

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Jul 4
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MAGRIETHA DU PLESSIS's avatar

I object to your reply about woman. I am one and I am most definitely able of critical thinking and not at all prone to group think, quite the opposite. This is a good substack, can we please keep it civil and objective.

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Sue Don Nim's avatar

Universal Suffrage was the biggest mistake made. EVER.

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Unsafe Streets's avatar

Come on now, how many men from the 1800s have you conversed with? You can only guess at the typical newspaper reader's IQ at that time.

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James Dowler's avatar

I'm only making the point that nowadays people watch screens and tvs whereas back then entertainment would include real social interactions and much more reading, which requires a lot more cognitive skills and builds up the critical faculty to a much higher degree. And finally, you can see from the civilisation itself, the Romantics, the architecture, the steam boats, and poets and artists from that time — all much greater than nowadays. The rise of technology acts to mask a general cognitive decline. I'm not saying the iq is lower per say, just that the epigenetic expression is much lower i.e. We do not build the skills and patience needed for great works of art or complex thought and reflection.

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God Bless America's avatar

When my daughter first went to college 12 years ago, one of the things that she noticed about her fellow students was that no one could memorize anything! 😳 Many of her fellow students would “hire out” their papers for other people to write for them. Also, before she got into her major, all of her tests were multiple-choice.

With AI, does anyone write anything in college anymore?

I don’t remember it being that way back in the 80s. 🤨

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Unsafe Streets's avatar

Okay, yes, I do agree with this nearly completely. But I think not much of the population was literate back then, and now much of the high IQ population leverages screens to be more intellectually powerful. What I think may be the difference is screens are a really effective "bread and circus" distraction for the masses.

Though I also see smart people dulled by screentime. I will have to think more about this.

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Compsci's avatar

Unsafe Streets. Although I was never alive in the early 1800’s, there was a famous French author, Alexis de Tocqueville, still widely quoted today who wrote in 1835 quite admiringly of the common American man of the time wrt his reading of newspapers and such and his interest in the body politic.

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AndyinBC's avatar

In the long ago days of my misspent youth, the news of the day was (mostly) printed. Different news organizations employed real live human beings to go places, to observe events, and talk with people. And ask questions! Then those real live human beings wrote, (with varying degrees of skill), their interpretations as to what they had seen, and heard. And the news organizations that employed them printed those stories - more or less as written.

But that was then. When reporters reported. And publishers published.

Before the ascendancy of the managerial state.

As 'The Poet of the Empire' so eloquently said, over 120 years ago:

I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me,

I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views;

I know a person small—

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all!

She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,

From the second she opens her eyes—

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

And seven million Whys!

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Colin Hunt's avatar

Rudyard Kipling should be mandatory literature in high-school.

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AndyinBC's avatar

Agree. Perhaps Kipling should also be mandatory in history and civics programs as well.

His works encompass ALL of the facets of empire: the good - and the bad.

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Colin Hunt's avatar

Is there anything sensible taught in any Civics course any more? At any level of schooling? When I was in university in the late 1970s, so-called Political Science was nothing more than an introduction to the hagiography of Marxist Socialism. As if the intricacies of Soviet totalitarianism mattered to anyone except those imprisoned by it.

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Mystic William's avatar

A friend took an MBA program recently at our local U. U Victoria in BC. One of the ones aimed at Executives. He said all the professors were Marxist and their intent was to inculcate Marxism in the students.

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rjt's avatar

I was cruelly forced to memorise and recite "If" after some obnoxious act in Grade Six. Surprisingly, I can't recall what I had done that time.

The teacher was a good man, a neighbour, and promoted my scholastic progress, but when I sailed with him some years later definitely needed more time in the boat.

We had the Jungle Books as the theme of Cub Scouts, so many of us were aware and had read the juvenile stories.

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Steghorn21's avatar

I used to work at the Financial Times in the UK back when it wasn't so much the EU rag it is today. However, even back then I remember thinking "What to a bunch of public-school upper class twits sitting in a big glass and metal box next to the River Thames know about what is really going on in the world?"

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Barekicks's avatar

They lost that office now, sign of the times.

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Andreas Stullkowski's avatar

Everyone with deeper knowledge of a particular subject notices how bad and superfluous mainstream journalists report about that specific subject.

But then they think:

ok, I can totally see that they have no knowledge of that subject where I am an expert and can objectively judge their reporting. But on any other subject, where I know little about, they are definitively very knowledgeable and I will believe their reporting with out any question.

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Fast Eddy's avatar

I stopped doing all interviews when Bloomberg completely f789ed me over in 2019.

They are lying pieces of garbage... which is what I told them the last time they asked

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Mystic William's avatar

I had media dealings 50 years ago when I represented a religious group. After four or five encounters I would be pleased if my name were spelled correctly and if they got a few facts right. As far as my main message….not a chance. 50% accurate, 50% bogus was a good bit of publicity.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

Did you see the news about the discovery of a photomolecular mechanism for evaporation? I wonder how much of potential resulting engineering developments are already pragmatically in place, and whether the discovery itself might spur new technologies...

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Danno's avatar

Not only the media, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent displayed a level of ignorance which I didn't think possible for a Justice of the Supreme Court.

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YM's avatar

Another DEI hire. She was brought on because of the checkboxes she filled, not because of her merit or ability.

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Colin Hunt's avatar

An Obama appointee in 2009.

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carily myers's avatar

She had never even been a traffic court judge before she became a SCOTUS Justice, mind blowing.

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Barekicks's avatar

She's the one who said she didn't feel safe going back to in-person work at the court unless her colleagues wore masks (this was back in 2021 I believe).

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JP's avatar

Remember: war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

I have a shirt with that quote! This one 👇

t.co/gp7BK55eFB

Love wearing it in front of sheeps! 😆

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AG's avatar

I figured it out when I was still in high school. In the last three years of high school, I participated in mathematics competitions. A local newspaper had a short article about the results of these competitions (not just math but physics and chemistry as well) on the regional level and then another article about the national level. There wasn't a single time (out of six) that the newspaper reported the results of the participants from our city correctly.

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Colin Hunt's avatar

Not a single one of the reporters doing the writeups on the competitions would have either understood any of the science being done, nor did they want to. Reporters even decades ago were bored to tears by science and mathematics even though these things are fundamental to how First World nations live.

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Ben Kurtz's avatar

Is Gell-Mann Amnesia still at play? Or have enough people wholly rejected the legacy media (at least in the U.S.) that we're entering a new phase in our information environment? I do feel like COVID kind of broke the old model.

Here is a definition of Gell-Mann Amnesia, by the way:

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]'s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

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Colin Hunt's avatar

The Legacy Media business model has been disintegrating for a long time before Covid. News media started losing its revenue base in advertising in the late 1990s. Newspapers saw their Classified sections vanish entirely. To make up for the lost revenue, newspapers: 1. cut news room staff; or 2. got more revenue in advertiser sponsored news articles or features; 3. or both. So to a far greater degree than was the case 30 years ago, Legacy Media have to push a narrative to attract revenue.

This accounts for nearly all of the reason why newspaper readership or television news viewership has been in steep decline year over year for at least the past two decades.

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Southern Sally's avatar

That’s so true - whenever you see a press report on something you really know about, there are always errors, if not outright lies.

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Matt330's avatar

It's also a very similar ruling to Nixon vs. Fitzgerald.

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Geary Johansen's avatar

Just over thirty years ago, as a student and at the tender age of 21, I had a car accident. The local press reported I was a 45 year old taxi driver. It was news to me!

I live in a low crime rural community. Village fetes and obits are the usual fare, padded with the usual ubiquitous corporate and local business puff pieces.

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Yuri Bezmenov's avatar

The Soviets had state run media. We have a media run state. MSM would make Pravda blush. Narrative Uber alles, until it implodes. Substack samizdats are the only independent voices searching for truth, we are the media now.

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SCA's avatar

There are plenty of morons in SubstackLand too. Here as everywhere the reader must bring common sense and skepticism and not swallow anything whole.

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carily myers's avatar

agree

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The Green Hornet's avatar

Musk, whether controlled opposition or not, has at least blunted the leftist monopoly on X/Twitter at least for now.

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Danno's avatar

He's provided the largest medium where truth can still be found.

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SaHiB's avatar

No; he still suspends my account because advocating human use of ivermectin, even for onchocerciasis, "advocate suicide".

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FlyoverCountry's avatar

If that's the only reason for suspending your account, it tells me he still hasn't gotten

fully rid of the old "content review" people (censorship department). Some have pointed out that there are Mossad people attached to X, but I have no way of knowing. The Ivermectin controversy is over, so I just can't understand account suspension solely for that. It was always a bogus, but it took 2-3 years to be acknowledged as such.

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SaHiB's avatar

Meet the new boss (Elon Musk), same as the old boss (Jack Dorsey).

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Steghorn21's avatar

Disagree. I have no illusions about him, but it's incredible the amount of anti-Deep State you see on X. None of this would have been tolerated 5 years ago.

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SaHiB's avatar

Then why doesn't he "tolerate" me, and repeatedly refuses to review the suspension? Send the conniving fraud to Dante's Malebolge!

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Danno's avatar

Elon is richer, more powerful, and has bigger stones than Jack. He's trying to do the right thing, but his coders haven't gotten around to rooting out all the bad algorithms yet.

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carily myers's avatar

lol, like

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Steghorn21's avatar

I still can't tell if Musk is a goodie or a baddie, but what he did by buying up Twitter from that weird, hippy guy has been inestimable for free speech.

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Danno's avatar

He's neither. He wants the platform to make money, and giving users freedom of speech adds a LOT of value to X.

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TonyZa's avatar

Musk lost lots of money and influence by being favorable to the right and all he got in return was ungratefulness.

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BrainJack's avatar

American forget there was in recent memory, an organization called The Committee of Concerned Journalists. These were professional journalists concerned that journalism was veering off-course, losing objectivity and ethics.

Sadly, their concerns were not heeded. https://journalistsresource.org/home/principles-of-journalism/

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Andrew P's avatar

The Media writes the narratives and Democrat and RINO politicians are just actors reciting their assigned lines. The same people fund the media and their political campaigns.

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Mrs Bucket's avatar

That's so true Yuri.

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Graham Cunningham's avatar

It has been said that “unless you think hard about political questions in our culture, you are liberal by default.” But this begs the question why so few people actually do think their way out of this philosophical straightjacket. The awesome power of mass media has to be a big part of the answer. It has afforded not just an enormous spread of information but also an enormous spread of disinformation - of the kind identified by Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Instead of an Orwellian thought police what we have is more like thought social workers and therapists - a great spider’s web of journalists, scriptwriters, opinionated actors, pop academics and advertising ‘creatives’, alternately flattering you, nagging at you and generally helping you to think correctly. It is a cancerous organism out of the control of anyone - even its own media elite - that brainwashes everyone, politicians included. It ‘keeps you informed’ with ‘The News’ and it entertains you with tv film and drama. It’s not so much that 'The News' is generally a deliberate attempt to tell lies. It’s actually worse than that: the very concept is flawed. Flawed by virtue of editorial selectivity; by virtue of newsroom groupthink; by virtue of a journalistic mindset whereby the dramatic narrative is more important than the actual subject matter and worst of all by the illusion that the consumer of news can really know what is going on all over the world just by switching on the news for half an hour or so...." https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Well said. Somehow we've got to get around the "gatekeepers of the news" - in a way that reaches far more people. Substack helps, but we're still not reaching nearly enough people or the "right" people. And Substack "extremists" and "kooks" can be easily dismissed or ignored by the narrative protectors.

The 100-percent groupthink of tens of thousands of "journalists," editors and publishers is surreal and non-sensical. As eugyppius points out today, this would seem to be statistically impossible.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

... But the "Biden has dementia" story might be a very-rare "truth bomb" that gets more people thinking about all the other Bogus Narratives the public has been fed.

If far more people start to have this 'eureka!" moment, maybe more "truth bombs" will start to detonate ... and wake more people up to these psyche-jolting truths. That's my hope anyway.

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God Bless America's avatar

One can always hope… I’m not sure if the sheep can handle all of it though. 😑😑😑

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Steghorn21's avatar

I think the truth about Biden's dementia and his journalist supporters might be scarier than we think: many of them actually believed their own lies. It's an often overlooked fact that propaganda works both ways. After a while, the purveyors of propaganda usually start believing their own lies.

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Andrew P's avatar

I don't think the editors and high ranking journalists actually believed it. They knew Biden was senile in 2020, but he could still get by plausibly with a little help from them. Now it is clear he can't. In 2020, they took one for the team. Now it is Biden's turn to take one for the team.

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Steghorn21's avatar

Or as Biden would put it: "Okay, it's my turn to take one for the flying octopus I caught of Block Island just before I won the Congressional Medal of Honor"

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JPC's avatar

I think the people uou allude to realised that they had a more malleable puppet than normal.

His dementia was a bonus extra.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Here's my ninth - and most important - article on "Biden has dementia." I think this is the most important because something has now changed in the world. Far more people know our "trusted" news sources ... should NOT be trusted.

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/our-first-significant-truth-bomb

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Andrew P's avatar

It doesn't have that reaction.They may realize that their Party's horse is now ready for the glue factory, so Kamala must be the nominee. They despise Trump, not because he is all that right-wing, but because he is anti-feminist and anti-illegal immigrant, and they aren't going to change their minds.

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Andrew P's avatar

You are never going to reach the "right" people. The Swing Voters, the ones who decide elections, are affluent suburbanites with busy lives. They have a TV on all the time while they do other things. They are the #1 target for TV advertisers. They might skim through the Washington Post or NYT looking for something to do that evening or weekend. They aren't interested enough, and don't have time enough, to read blogs like this one. If you want to reach them, you have to be on the TV channel playing all the time in their kitchens.

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Barekicks's avatar

Bingo

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Barekicks's avatar

I'm a contractor working for those PR, marketing and advertising agencies full of "strategists", "creatives", "consultants" and "account managers".

The groupthink is off the scale.

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Tardigrade's avatar

"Last week, the liberal German Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, granted an interview to Julian Reichelt’s alternative ‘populist’ ‘right-wing’ platform NiUS. Establishment journalists lost their minds."

Just like when Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin recently. Most of the criticisms I saw were the fact that he did it at all, and nothing to do with the substance of the interview.

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Rosemary B's avatar

exactly. Tucker is a "far right wing extremist" interviewing a criminal

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carily myers's avatar

no shit

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The Rake's avatar

Even the right made coutless memes about the "history lesson". Most people are fucking peasants.

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MAGRIETHA DU PLESSIS's avatar

What a lot of people miss is that with the "history" lesson Putin demonstrated his mental acuity for a very good reason.

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The Rake's avatar

He was trying to inform the viewer about the reason why he wanted to join the russian peoples. To any sane person in any sane era that would be a simple answer. You simply do not start a war without a historical precedent, unless, well, unless you are the US Empire, who makes up "incidents" as casus belli. What i find odd is that most americans, even on the right, thought it was funny that one should be that "deep". For them a 30 minute talk about history is "too deep". It is as if they expected him to say "fr fr no cap". Shows how far the standart has fallen.

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working rich's avatar

Brilliant dissection of the problem. Just last week the White House press secretary ( Buckwheat in drag) blamed AI manipulation for FJB’s incompetent appearance. And the dinosaur media pushed that view until we all saw the “ show.”

Please, keep Biden as the candidate.

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SCA's avatar

Are you speaking of Mushroom Topsy? You'd think with that salary she could employ a better stylist.

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Viv's avatar
Jul 4Edited

"As in the communist East, variety is confined to a kind of black market – that is to say an array of blogs, social media accounts and alternative (mostly online) publications that you’re not supposed to read and that the official discourse wholly ignores. "

Not only are you not supposed to read them, but they are increasingly subject to back-door closure, exactly as happened in the communist east. Collecting money for tea for truckers protesting Justin Trudeau? Your bank account is closed. Sorry, you have a problem with that? It's a free market, set up your own bank. Own a Hong Kong paper and publish the occasional piece that's mildly critical of the Chinese goverment? Offices raided and off to jail with you! There's a national security law don't you know? Saying things that contradict national health authority advice on youtube? Discouraging people from taking their 15th booster? No cut on the adverts for you! Also p****a* will freeze your funds once we tell them what you are up to!

You see, we don't even have to ban you, just use exactly the same playbook as the commies did to pretend there was a vibrant, free society going on!

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Sue Don Nim's avatar

BOOOM!

Truth!

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Erik Hoffmann's avatar

It takes two to tango. Don't let the gullible audience off the hock, Eugyppius.

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eugyppius's avatar

The depressing truth is that most people are followers who will believe what they read. It seems that there's nothing that can be done about this, but it's really, really infuriating sometimes.

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Oregonian's avatar

Public education is an education in obedience, conformity, silent acquiescence, arbitrary authority, state power, and the secular religion of progressives. If we want freedom, we must first free our children from state run indoctrination camps for their formative years.

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God Bless America's avatar

I wish everyone could homeschool… It has been a blessing to our family! 24 years down and four more years to go. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

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Steghorn21's avatar

Same here, GBA. However, everyone CAN homeschool if they really want to. There are so many networks out there to help parents who also need to work.

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MAGRIETHA DU PLESSIS's avatar

In Germany homeschooling is not allowed.

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God Bless America's avatar

Time to come down to Mexico and walk on into the USA… they even give you a bag of our tax money and a welcome mat… just make sure you stay away from the blue cities, they are dangerous and violent…

HSLDA (homeschool legal defense association) is a great resource if there are any options available for homeschooling… it’s an American legal group, but very active. Our states over here are not all the same for homeschooling. Some states are very easy to homeschool in and others are not.

Prayers that everyone will be able to homeschool in the future. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

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God Bless America's avatar

BTW, I just took an ancestry test and I am 30% German 🥰😁😁😁

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Suzie's avatar

It is especially true of people who consume TV produced news, as they get “attached” to, or feel loyal to the newscasters or hosts as if they were personal friends.

It’s a mental disorder.

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SMS's avatar
Jul 4Edited

I think it's also about watching TV (or as it is now, Netflix, Prime, PBS, Hulu, etc.). I'm out of touch with that medium, and similarly, with friends and family who are regular consumers. It's like they live on a different planet. And they are also MSM believers.

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God Bless America's avatar

🎯

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rjt's avatar

I watched Walter Cronkite with the space program avidly and with great trust (segue to ... "We were so much younger then...."

Knowlton Nash was also a Canadian nationally trustworthy icon.

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It'sUglyOutThere's avatar

In all fairness, I grew up in a world and with people for whom trust in our institutions was a given. We knew that politicians and bureaucrats could be, and were, motivated by money and power, but largely believed that they were anomalous, and that OUR guy was one of the good ones, mostly. After 9/11 with the accelerated bloating of the administrative state, Barry Obama's presidency, and finally the Plandemic, the scales have fallen from my eyes. I think this has happened for many, but many more still continue to believe in the system as idealized in our youth. I suppose we can all be blamed for our ignorant idealism, but hope dies hard.

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SCA's avatar

We were sold (and most bought) the stinking fish fabrication of the JFK myth and we elected morons like former CIA head Bush Sr. Nothing new is happening.

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It'sUglyOutThere's avatar

Agreed. It turns out that it's been developing since at least WWII, and more likely back to the Wilson administration. Still, wishful thinking and faith in our institutions, including the press, is strong.

Who really wants to confront the idea that much of it is lies and misdirection?

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SCA's avatar

Human nature always indulges as vigorously as it can in lies and misdirection.

But we in the US have pretty durable foudational principles. We just need to drag ourselves back to them as often as necessary and if we haven't the guts and strength to do it, that's on us.

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NAB's avatar

This describes me to a "T"

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JPC's avatar

I think the scrub Bush presidency was the first open view.

"We create our own reality " was the hubris catch phrase of the time.

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SCA's avatar

It is extremely lonely to be a not-follower. Even here in the Covid-lies-exposing pastures of SubstackLand, any time an author or commenter diverges from what the readership wants to hear the pitchforks and torches come out.

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Rosemary B's avatar

and all of us know soo many tooo many followers. It is not enjoyable to be around them

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

All "leaders" are actually "followers." They all followed guidance offered by Fauci, Birx, the WHO, the prestigious medical associations, etc.

It's interesting to note that in the press, the people who didn't follow the pack - like Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and some Substack "contrarian" all-stars - all got rich and famous. (There's a lesson there too).

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Harley Smedlapp's avatar

What you are describing is in essence a mass formation of the type described by Matthias Desmet in "The Psychology of Totalitarianism." What's unique about THIS mass formation is that it's binary: on the one (obvious) hand, the readers constitute a self-enforcing mass. But on the other hand, the purveyors of all that pabulum are ALSO a self-enforcing mass. "True believers," all, in whatever they're told to say and believe...

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Steghorn21's avatar

It's true, it's always been that way, and yes, it is depressing. However, it's also true that history has often turned for the better. That's because the ovine majority don't really matter where change is concerned. It's a significant minority of committed truthseekers who often change things. That's why we should never despair.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Great piece. It's called "Pack Journalism" for a reason. As a journalist, you can propose a story that departs from the pack narrative, but your editor won't let you INVESTIGATE or publish such a story. If you persist, you will be cast out of the pack/herd.

I've made the point that it would seem like if the MSM had, say, 14,000 working journalists, a few of them would have written stories that go against the authorized narrative. But, no, the capture rate is 100 percent - 14,000 out of 14,000 "watchdog journalists" towing the party line.

For example, I defy anyone to find me a corporate media article that attempted to show that the Covid "vaccines" were NOT "safe and effective." You can't find such an example in the mainstream press. Of course, you can find 500,000 stories in the alternative media (and Substack) that say this.

If we ever have a Great Purge of "leaders" in important organizations ("draining the swamp"), we better start in the Establishment/Corporate newsrooms.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Question: Are all these editors and journalists really this obtuse? Or do some of them KNOW the stories they are reporting are brazen lies?

Either possibility is a tad disconcerting. And it's not just journalists - every "leader" in every important "truth-seeking" organization is dumb as a door knob. (Call me a cynic, but IMO this truth does not bode well for the future of civilization).

https://billricejr.substack.com/p/our-world-is-being-led-by-the-obtuse

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AndyinBC's avatar

I would postulate that a significant percentage of the "editors and journalists" who toil in that which passes for journalism today simply DON"T CARE that the "stories they are reporting are brazen lies".

They do, however, care, very much, for that pay cheque every month.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

They also see that there's not many salaried journalism jobs left. This makes them even more inclined to promote the authorized party position.

If they get laid off, they are going to have to join me as a Substack author - pleading for a few paid subscriptions.

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Sue Don Nim's avatar

Or they could learn to code....

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Alistair Penbroke's avatar

Although this essay is - as always - an amusing and artfully written analysis of the state of things, it is unsatisfying because it doesn't explore the underlying reasons for it. Let me offer a brief analysis now.

There are right wing newspapers and formerly neutral(ish) outlets like Reuters or the AP, but non-leftist media now finds it much harder to compete and manages to survive mostly in the tabloid market, by writing the kinds of stories that left wing journalists find beneath them e.g. human interest stories about celebrities. Why is this?

The left tell themselves it's because they're so very sophisticated. Look closer and we can see more convincing reasons:

1. Left wing journalists work primarily for political influence and salary is secondary to that. They effectively treat the ability to manipulate powerful people as a part of their comp package. This means if you're willing to hire left wing journalists you can pay a lot less, so your costs are lower, and that margin can be ploughed into lower prices or more marketing or more writers (typically the latter). "Right wing" people (really: politically neutral people) are less likely to go into a poorly paid field to begin with, so that immediately restricts supply, but also are much more willing to consider adjacent careers in things like corporate communications that the left would find icky.

2. News itself is a commodity because newspapers all compete with each other online in a global market. You also can't copyright news or keep it a secret, so news is always subsidized by something else. It used to be advertising but journalists treated that as a sideshow instead of their core business, so they got outcompeted by Google and Facebook who both took advetising seriously. Nowadays news is paid for by the willingness of VERY politically engaged people to pay for opinion/commentary, and also grants from billionaire foundations who were fooled by the last round of propaganda you published (and who are looking for an expensive social mission - anathema to the right).

3. Left wing media is much more willing to maximize reach even if it means losing money for long periods (e.g. the Guardian), or relying on state subsidies/fees, or relying on the largesse of billionaire owners. Non-leftist media doesn't do this so has to put most content behind paywalls, limiting their reach.

All this means the winning strategy post-Google is to constantly reinforce your audiences pre-existing ideology regardless of what happens in reality. The left is more ideological than the right (I don't believe "the right" means much in today's world) and so more committed to politics in general; they are willing to make financial sacrifices in order to win normies aren't. So, the news caters to them.

Note we here are no better. I pay for Eugyppius not because he provides a balanced or ideologically neutral news diet, but because I appreciate his commentary and reporting on a part of the world I otherwise wouldn't hear that much about.

In short, newspapers that try to avoid leftism are at a competitive disadvantage.

What can be done? I actually think AI can be a key part of the answer. Can elaborate if there's interest.

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eugyppius's avatar

I see this a little differently. At least, I would offer an additional explanation, that is perhaps compatible with portions of yours:

Journalists could, in theory, aim to produce content that appeals to specific audiences. Whether left or right, is beside the point here. Were they to pursue this strategy rigorously, we would have highly varied news coverage, as different outlets cultivated different readerships and played to their varying interests. This is more or less what Substack looks like.

The problem with this approach, particularly in the arena of politics, is that it neglects the substantial power that arises from coordinated coverage. What we call the 'mainstream media' are distinguished above all be deprioritising the interests of their readers in favour of elaborate information management campaigns that aim to produce specific opinions, moods and outlooks across the population. This necessarily entails producing uniform uninteresting content and foregoing substantial profit opportunities, in return for a substantial say in political outcomes.

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Alistair Penbroke's avatar

Substack hasn't yet shown it can sustain publications with more than a few people, let alone a whole newsroom. It's built around the realization that good opinion writing was being mis-priced by being diluted with lots of other "news" writing that the readers didn't care about, and thus that great writers could make more money by capturing all the value.

At heart the problem is that people will not pay for news. News has to be forced down most people's throats! The news industry is funded by weird cross-subsidies, grants, license fees and other non-market oriented schemes which means it ekes out a living and thus falls prey to the most weirdly motivated people, who not surprisingly then aggressively self-police to kick out anyone who is working against their real agenda.

There is just no obvious way of fixing this for as long as news is written by humans.

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eugyppius's avatar

I don't mean that Substack is a viable model for all of journalism, I mean only that it indicates the kind of content you get from an exclusive focus on cultivating a readership. Substack isn't unique here – most of the blogosphere, YouTube, etc. exhibits similar variation in coverage and analysis. Some 'news' platforms *do* cater to their readers, and many of them fare very well with this strategy. They are generally derided as populist right-wing peddlers of Russian disinformation and so forth.

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Jul 4
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SMS's avatar

Oh sure, jews like Jeff Bezos

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SCA's avatar

People in all societies have been very long conditioned to accept sermons from the pulpit and everything is a religion/cult. The op-ed writer doesn't just tell you what he thinks but that you are best advised to think it too. Publications of every slant always have the one or two "from the opposite side" columnists who invariably turn out to be selected for their idiocy and not their savage discernment.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

I've come to believe that some Deep State general simply decides - "this is what has to happen. To make this happen, we've got to create and defend these five to 20 (false) narratives." That's the script or the game-plan. The MSM is the most important organization to implementing these plans/scripts.

Of all the captured organizations - or chess pieces - the press is the most powerful or important.

FWIW, a non-captured press could quickly and easily debunk all of these false narratives - and expose all of these Machiavellian villains. (If they wanted to do this, which they don't.)

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Sherry 1's avatar

That’s exactly what is needed. A non-captured press. Watergate level reporting/revealing the TRUTH. Truth bombs going off in every direction, left, right and center! Hard, cold merciless truth to shock the sleepers awake and infuriate the indoctrinated.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

But the "official" press is so captured and complicit, they are never going to do this. Which means we have to have several excellent "work-arounds" to get around the controlled "gatekeepers of the news."

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Jack Gallagher's avatar

Do not discount one other basic human flaw. The current DNC-captured large MSM news outlets simply make sure that all new hires are people who think and harbor ideologies just like their own.

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Bill Rice, Jr.'s avatar

Yep. They definitely would never hire someone like me. Nor will they run any freelance article I send to them.

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A Whip of Cords's avatar

You might be missing 2 very important “causes” for the way things are now: the Blackmail Industrial Complex and the basic economics of modern media. Regarding the BIC, if politicians can be blackmailed on an industrial scale (e.g, Epstein and similar operations, child sex trafficking, NSA capture of All Digital communications, etc.), then MSM editors and owners can certainly be as well. “Print, post, and broadcast what we tell you, or else…” Secondly, basic economics tells you the MSM’s market has shrunk so dramatically that they must have have an alternate source of income - government subsidies (and Big Pharma money, too). For example, Twitter, pre-Musk: a cursory look at the cost of the infrastructure that allows Twitter to do what it does, the way it does it, worldwide and simultaneously, should cost about $5B U.S. every year. Their revenues have never approached that. Who had the money to sustain those kinds of loses every year? Only state actors with the ability to print money.The US government has a proven ability to hide expenditures in “black” budgets. I have zero doubt that members of the regime media get their cut. Yes, they are true believers, but it helps to be paid to believe the regime’s narratives.

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Sherry 1's avatar

In Canada the payoffs are blatantly out in the open. Trudeau dispenses millions in Taxpayer dollars to most of the MSM under the pretence of ensuring ‘Canadian content’, meaning State propaganda. That’s why their reader/viewership numbers are cratering as Canadians seek news of the world elsewhere. Like right here.

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Andrew P's avatar

Don't ignore the elephant in the room - big advertisers. The biggest of all is Pharma, and the other big corps follow along. Only the big outlets of the MSM get contracts from big advertisers. There advertisers aren't really selling their products with their ads - they are buying news narratives and placing their brands with the news. That is how coordination is executed. They are the MSM's biggest customer. Their money talks, and they don't advertise on right wing media - never did actually. You want to coordinate a news narrative? Then get the CEOs of all the biggest advertising conglomerates and the Ad agencies on the same page.

And the journalists on the biggest outlets get paid well. Their employers have access to sources of revenue totally denied to their right wing competition like big advertisers, government contracts, full page ads from the Chinese Communist Party, etc..

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SCA's avatar

I'm not as old as some people but I suspect I'm considerably older than you, and I remember, in the '80s, when our "newspaper of record," that I was taught from elementary school to respect and admire as a bastion of courage and truth, would describe Saddam Hussein as either a monster or a strong admirable leader depending on which side we were supporting in the Iran-Iraq war that week.

And I ain't never forgot how that schooled me.

Long before the debate finally stripped merely one aspect of Biden naked, everyone everywhere was describing him as an honorable, compassionate, decent etc. etc. etc. (time out for vomiting) guy. Which he was never.

But long before that, the Skeeze Couple of Those Times, Jack and Jackie Kennedy, were presiding over the magical kingdom--in Washington, yet!--of Camelot. When actually he was the usual sort of rich man's failson bribed and greased into political power and she was the usual sort of political prostitute wife these guys must have on their arms to make eveyrthing look kosher.

We just love to be fooled and we will always get fooled again, with a little time out here and there for fifteen minutes of outrage.

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Simon Baddeley's avatar

Great piece. The media lock-step you describe is a dying resort. Podcasting (narrow vs broad casting) compares to small mammals amid the dinosaurs. MSM and Legacy Media, as well as haemorrhaging talent to the 'narrow-casters', are struggling to raise the revenue - commercial or taxes - to stay in the game. As they become more reliant on partnerships with corporations and governments so they have haemorrhaged public trust and - and this is the real giveaway - quality. Long ago a smart colleague said you can tell when something truly new is emerging. The novel trend is not recognised for what it will become. It thrives by parasitising the body of the older entity. Thus narrow casting in its early days decades ago. "You can only surmise the presence and strength of what is emerging by the increasing enfeeblement of its host." You probably need to be as old as I - born 1942 - one reliant most of my life on MSM to see what's happened and is happening. Of course the small mammals can be grotesque, vicious and contemptible, but what chance has an unwieldy national broadcaster or publisher against the work of a talented one-man/one woman outfit addressing the world from a small hi-tech studio in their front-room? Mainstream news could walk all over the old pamphleteers and doorstep mailers, but the whole world can read and view a podcast with fewer than a 1000 viewers. They can search out the alternative platforms when the ailing giants send their algorithms on censorship missions. No wonder these faltering agencies have circled their wagons, sidled up to powerful sponsors and collectively subscribed to the censorship industrial complex, whining about dis- and mis-information. 'Awesome and terrifying'? Not once you see the downward curve of trust for MSM across the world.

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Viv's avatar

It is deliciously ironic that some proportion of paid up taz subscribers are you, Nius, Boris R, Achgut, and so on.

At this point, while still fewer in number than the yogurt-knitting enemies of civilization, the critics have to be a fairly substantial proportion of subscribers.

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Rikard's avatar

The western media of the past 20ish years can best be summed up with this phrase:

"Repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it a truth"

In this case, it is the people owning and working in the media that believes their own lies, since thet define themselves as purveyors of truths beyond reality.

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jdm's avatar

I don't disagree with anything in this post, but I think it understates the role the consumer in the maintenance of the power of the press. What I know about the USA and Denmark is that alternate info is available but not widely read. By choice. Even when consumers are provided with links. It's all apparently too much trouble.

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eugyppius's avatar

I can't speak to Denmark, but I know about the Anglosphere in which I operate. here 'alternative' media is huge, actually millions and millions of people consume this. leading content producers have audiences larger than some broadcast media.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Where is "here"? None of my friends have ever heard of substack, even those who are avid fans of Heather Cox Richardson.

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eugyppius's avatar

I mean 'here' in Anglosphere alt-media world. Substack is a smaller platform, but the sphere as a whole (from Alex Jones to Joe Rogan and everyone in between) has millions and millions of readers.

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Rosemary B's avatar

Oh, of course, it is the "fake news"

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Barekicks's avatar

Think streaming, not reading. Megyn Kelly's YouTube show has higher viewers than mainstream broadcast news shows, to give one example.

Don't know the numbers for Tucker, or Daily Wire shows, but they're high. And think about Joe Rogan.

In the UK (where I live) alt media like UnHerd and Spiked (who run websites and do weekly podcasts) are thriving. (UnHerd has just opened an office in DC so it can cover American politics.)

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Colin Hunt's avatar

Exactly so, eugyppius. This is so much the case that the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau has passed a censorship law 10 days ago to try to control on-line speech and opinions. This is specifically to be targeted against those who differ from the government's line on global warming, on the non-existent genocide in Canada against First Nations. The Press has been remarkably silent on the obvious statements of sheer insanity by Canadian Minister of Health Mark Holland, who just this week suggested that "some Canadians were so desperate for dental care that they were drinking gasoline."

Holland is obviously insane, but that's likely from fear that he will be one of the hundreds of elected MPs swept away to oblivion in the next election.

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Andrew P's avatar

Yes, but swing voters never consume alternate press, and they are the ones who decide elections.

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Tardigrade's avatar

If they consumed alternate press, they wouldn't be swing voters anymore ;)

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Handsome Pristine Patriot's avatar

Daniel Greenburg of Sultan Knish makes a very good argument as to why DementedJoe WILL be the nominee.

They don't need anyone brighter:

https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2024/07/whos-running-country.html

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Rosemary B's avatar

Precisely. However, Michele Obama polls higher than President Trump, so they will work on promoting her. That is my guess. It seems like the perfect choice. For democrats and most republicans, it is true, the president is just the puppet here in the US and in other countries. Bought and paid for by criminals

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

For the love of god, there is ZERO CHANCE Michelle Obama has any interest in being President.

Imagine her life for a moment: she wakes up every day in one of her mansions or in the mansion of a wealthy friend, has a full staff of servants and assistants, heads to a private plane for either a jaunt to another mansion or maybe a private island or European castle or maybe to some event to get her ass kissed and receive a giant check for just being her famous fabulous self. She lives better than Louis XIV and has to answer to no one—and she's gonna trade this to negotiate a budget with some greasy reptiles in DC?

Being prez would be a downgrade for her! She aint that stupid.

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Rosemary B's avatar

She would not have to lift a finger or do anything.

The machine is doing that already and has been for the past 4 years.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

It doesn't matter, there would still be the campaign, the speeches, the press, playing the role in DC, the effort of maintaining the facade, the full-time job that is the presidency, even with the long weekends—for what?

Would you rather be a free princess or a captive politician, especially if you're already very wealthy, very famous, have easy access to anyone or anything you may ever need, and have already lived 8 years in the WH?

Michelle has never run for office and never will.

I know she takes up all this psychic space in people's minds, but it aint happenin...

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Rosemary B's avatar

I sincerely hope that you are right.

Then again, perhaps they democrats will "let President Trump win" so they can destroy him some more. They love being offensive and disrespectful. They are the people that crash parties and break everything as if they are spoiled horribly naughty children.

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Handsome Pristine Patriot's avatar

Is that the same Big Mike that, finally became SO proud of her country AFTER it elected her Communist husband?

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Rosemary B's avatar

one and the same!!!

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Andrew P's avatar

Moochelle would be a dud if she actually ran, and she knows it. If Biden fails to wake up one morning, Kamala is the nominee.

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joe stuerzl 85's avatar

Biden will be a great president after he dies ,because he can never make a mistake again . Also during his last three years ,he read our comments here ,to learn how to govern .

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Handsome Pristine Patriot's avatar

If only. Ha!

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Tareq I. Albaho, PhD's avatar

I would just insert the words "corporate-owned" before "Press" in your headline.

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SaHiB's avatar

"Advertiser-owned". Since high school (1970s), I've suggested not buying anything advertised on MSM.

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