I'm a writer and I can tell you that the most distressing thing about the last four years has been what has happened to journalism in this country. Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party. It's breath-taking what they are doing. I think this corruption of the media is linked to the corruption of the Democrat party (and particularly people like Biden). I don't see how you separate the two anymore. If people don't like Trump's personality, he'll be gone soon, but if we let the left socialist + media take over this country, it will be unrecognizable in a week.
Bari Weiss said it best "a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper[the NYT]: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else."
I don't think they believe it is the truth. They believe that thinking this way and forcing others to do the same will create a Utopia. Their utopia is actually a dystopia. Everything that has ever tried to utopia thing has all met the same bad ending. I think the Democrats have become a cult. You know where you can never leave or have any communication with the outside world. That is the very definition of a cult.
If they want to push it to the logical conclusion, they'll end up under siege in their own filthy cities and descend into barbarism as they fight among themselves.
That's something I'd rather endure than more of this.
Time for a literary detour in support 😀 In 1949 C. S. Lewis published an essay which in part had this to say on good intentions:
"...Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience..."
Always love that quote, and trot it out when people are excoriating businesses for being "greedy". Greed is ugly, and can hurt people...but it can also generate positive externalities, AND it's a straightforward, easily understood motivation.
Unlike the vile, amorphous beast* that is "For your own good."
I actually have what I think is a new insight here. I watched "The Social Dilemma". We all kind of know the press is in a bubble, and we all kind of know that social media, especially Twitter, feeds that. So it's not news that journos are in a social media-fed bubble.
But watching that documentary gave me a new respect for how potent that effect can be, and how it can be stimulated and encouraged by the AI algorithms of social media. Social media already lets you pick your friends etc, but the algos specifically feed you content they align with your previous thinking. So these journos are being forced deeper into the "rabbit holes" by the algos themselves. It explains a lot.
This particularly resonated with me when I listened to the full interview of Trump by Lesley Stahl. Stahl was asking questions that I couldn't even agree with the premise of (and were in some cases demonstrably untrue, like asking Trump why he said that Gretchen Whitmer should be locked up. How could Stahl be that in the dark about reality? For the same reasons that basic lies that are repeated often enough by the media become accepted truth - and all fed by social media and journos in one big awful feedback loop.
To see this more clearly, it's helpful to understand that this is why people start to believe in "flat Earth" theories, too. They get fed the videos and content by social media algorithms so much they believe that it's true. If it's that easy to convince someone the Earth is flat, how hard can it be to make Trump seem evil, as inherently flawed as he already is?
"The Social Dilemma" was fascinating and nobody would argue with most of it. Toward the end, though, you realize their solution is regulating content so that things that are "objectively true, like climate change and race issues" are represented right. My solution is to delete Facebook once my son gets my pictures off it for me. And I don't Twitter. I may try to promote my work on Parler. It's all conservatives right now, though they want liberals who care about free expression. My other solution is to recommend to every conservative to not put their children in public universities until they can prove that all ideas are allowed and that it functions as universities are supposed to. Stop paying until they stop censoring conservatives. This is the biggest issue of our times.
Still, the tone of her questioning and the direct quote attributed was disingenuous.
I hate the guy, but I don't want to see anyone get this kind of bullshit treatment by the press -who are directly in cahoots with a network of wrongdoers that have been scamming roughshod for decades.
We're talking war crimes, bribes, kickbacks, murders, you name it.
If Darth Vader walked out on stage and revealed that they had been pulling the strings for 60 years and they've finished their Death Star, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Glad you posted the video, so that people can see that when the crowd said that, Trump shook his head and did a dismissive hand wave. And that Stahl's statement is demonstrably untrue:
Donald Trump:
Why would I lock her up? No, but why didn’t you say, “You don’t want to lock up the Governor?” Of course I don’t want to lock her up. Why would I lock her up?
Lesley Stahl:
Because you were in front of a rally of people saying it, encouraging it.
Your video link clearly demonstrates that to be untrue.
Here's another one, btw: Stahl quoted Trump as saying something begging suburban women to like him, because that's how the media reported his statements from the video below. Watching the video makes it clear that she'd not herself watched it, but relied on those media reports. She literally misquotes him to make it sound worse, adding "please, please" at the end of his phrasing, making it demonstrably untrue.
Trump says something demonstrably untrue in this also, as Gary will appreciate me pointing out. He claims 52% of women voted for him when that was the number for white women.
Dude... I was a lifelong Democrat. After the Obama administration's god-awful foreign policy, and the free pass the banking industry received after orchestrating yet another market collapse and on TOP of all that the DNC/Clinton campaign/illegal spying and four years straight of bogus lying... I'll never vote D again. The fact that the media giants are all trying to smooth over Biden's greasy handiwork is enough for me to know that it's against my interests if he gets in office.
I won't vote R... but I won't vote D either.
They all work for enough common funding that I just can't.
I voted Libertarian -they don't have enough sway to make things worse and at this point that's all I want -for things to not get worse. Vote your conscience and feel good about that.
You might want to reword that to make your point. Obviously people believe the rantings of their political allies. If you're trying to make some point that Trump is my political ally you should consider that the median person drawn to a Matt Taibbi substack is more likely anti-anti-Trump than pro-Trump.
Why not ask Biden why he used an overtly, (albeit archaic,) racist term when talking about black kids... He referred to "roaches" and quickly walked it back a little to smooth it over before anyone realized what was said.
Why not ask about that?
Why not ask about his REALLY inappropriate comments to female CHILDREN???
"I can't wait to see you dance in another few years."
Are you fucking serious???? I mean, these aren't minor slights -they're majorly WRONG. Yet, it gets smoothed over and explained away as if YOU the listener were mistaken.
I share your frustration about the dishonesty in the mainstream media, but they are so incredibly far from joining the socialist party. This is readily apparent when you go back over the coverage (and sometimes complete lack thereof) of Bernie Sanders' campaigns, for instance. These media companies are owned by multi-billionaire capitalists with like minded interests. (Jeff Bezos for WaPo, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, Bill Gates and GE own MSNBC, etc. Billionaires, by nature, abhor socialism.)
Are they often aligned with the Democratic Party? Absolutely. More broadly, they always toe the "establishment line," and aim to be good stewards of the corporate American empire/military industrial complex. This is why they hate Trump. Even when he's not carrying out anti-establishment policy in any genuine way, he's saying stuff out-loud that is rarely said, like the fact that corporate interests in the military industrial complex push a pro-war bias on our foreign policy consensus (and he's 100% correct).
I'm no fan of Trump, but as I moved further Left (I voted for Bernie in the primary) I began to see how biased the media is against Trump and even his supporters. But how is that possible? If the media "joined the socialist party," and I moved further Left, how did I uncover this bias against Trump?
It's simple: they share a similar bias *against* the Left. I started seeing all the lies about Bernie Sanders' supporters, that they were mainly white and male. I saw them hinting at this similarity between Bernie and Trump's base, knowing full well their viewers would get the hint that "Bernie Bros" must be racist. I saw how quick CNN was to publish a story about Bernie allegedly saying something sexist, and how the only sources for this story were his main political opponent's staffers. I saw them grill Bernie over praising Castro's literacy program by asking him why he praises dictators, when he was saying something Obama previously got a pass for.
All this made me rethink damn near everything the MSM has said about Trump, and by extension, what they haven't said about the Democratic Party (and Neocon, never-Trumper war-hawks like John Bolton). I can guarantee right now that whatever you're seeing on these channels that appears to be "far-Left" is all cultural or social. They'll promote BLM all day every day, cancel people for using the wrong terminology that was acceptable just yesterday, show their support for tearing down statues, etc. Whether people think it's good or terrible that they do these things, one thing is clear: these issues do not negatively impact their bottom line, in any way, shape, or form. It does not at all reshape the economy, which is the number one goal of socialists, agree with them or not.
When you see the MSM pulling this shit, just think of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a Kente cloth while doing not a fucking thing about the issue for which she is showing her faux-solidarity.
Some establishment reporter reproached Trump with not following Bolton's advice. "If I'd followed his advice we'd be in World War Six by now." He went on to say it was useful to walk into a negotiation with Bolton by his side "because they'd see that maniac coming in with me" and the talks went much more smoothly.
Establishment media is practically owned by the military industrial complex and the national security state. I don't take anything they say about foreign policy seriously.
Unfortunately, though, a lot of people think that's just a conspiracy theory, and end up so woefully misinformed they think Bolton's biggest sin was not snitching on Trump sooner.
"Billionaires, by nature, abhor socialism."? I would disagree. Witness the gifts of billions to support the far-left. I do not know why, except perhaps guilt and a type of innocence that being sheltered in a mansion might bring about. My observation is that most (not all) of the "very rich" are far enough left to be supportive of what would be considered socialist or near-socialist causes (BLM identifies itself as Marxist and look at the millions upon millions they have received).
A great book is "The Smear" by Sharyl Attkisson in which she names the names of those giving dark money, both left and right. Its about 95 percent left that get named, yet she is a mainstream CBS reporter without an axe to grind.
Here's the question, though: are they giving this money to organizations who's number one goal is restructuring the economy? I'm guessing not. The founders of BLM are self-proclaimed Marxists, but the majority of the movement (which is largely decentralized) is centered around racial issues.
Billionaires aren't donating to promote socialism. Maybe there's some weird exception I don't know about, but they're donating to Leftist/Liberal causes because it gets those same people off their back, and just like corporate media and corporate Dems that co-opt these movements, they chose to focus on politically correct symbolism and virtue signalling that won't challenge their power, but will improve their image.
Can't imagine voting for Bernie but at least you see what's happening with the media here. Bernie made an unholy alliance with Biden, but the media and corrupt Democratic machine have done the same media crap to Bernie.
“Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party.”
I’ll concede your point that they’ve “abandoned any semblance of the truth,” fine.
But trying to equate our corporate owned, mainstream media, as ‘socialist’ is a delusion. The US corporate news media is a perfect embodiment of capitalism!
Actually the media is a marriage of State Capitalism and Leftist ideology, properly termed “fascist”. Nothing free market about the legacy media, unlike SubStack.
True, but they give cover to the socialists for now, hoping to keep them in line. But if Biden takes power and gets the Senate too, we will see Big Tech, Wall Street go to battle with their socialist allies. Remember what happened every time with communism. You can read about it in Gulag Archipelago ... the political egalitarians were killed (literally) by the political authoritarians. Their eventual breakup is a sure thing if they take power. They cannot exist side by side for long. Unless Big Tech and Wall Street figure out how to keep their socialist/progressive allies inline without ruining the economy and taking their wealth.
If Democrats are socialists then I am a ballerina. They may use Stalinist propaganda methods, but they are not socialists. Even the avowed socialist Bernie is not a socialist by European standards. And leave Marx alone, he didn’t deal with stupid cultural wars.
Right. Black Lives Matter just removed from their mission statement that they promoted Marxism and the demise of the nuclear family. Black Lives Matter is indistinguishable from the Democrat party now. But it's been coming a long time. Get your point shoes out.
So you’re acknowledging my point that our mainstream media operates on Capitalistic principles - the same as any other large profit-driven corporation in America.
So they're simultaneously Socialist and Capitalist?
No. I'm saying how they operate right now is irrelevant because they are controlled by (and behaving like) the socialist left and they are suppressing news. And lots of it as Matt's article clearly illuminates. They do it because they back a globalist/socialist philosophy themselves (90% of the media are leftists or close--not to mention university professors and Hollywood--the biggest purveyors of [bad]information) -- and because mostly the people who have opposed Trump have been DC establishment swamp creatures and that includes much of mainstream media, though they may regret it soon enough.
They need to make $$$$ and draw salaries for themselves-people had to do that in the USSR too. Socialism just means the govt is signing your paycheck, to a greater or a lesser degree. Capitalism just means people pay you for stuff w/out govt acting as competition.
No, the capitalists are just trying to appease the socialists for now. Trump is too dangerous for the capitalists. the question is can the capitalists take power and keep the socialists in check. Not sure about that. We will see.
It's a process. Nations don't just suddenly become socialist or communist. The first thing totalitarians do is control the media. They've been doing that for a long time but now they don't even pretend to be objective anymore. Big companies can want socialism or globalism for their own power and that's what's happening presently. Wall Street money is going to Biden, not Trump. It's a process. If we don't stand up to it, we'll be sorry.
Wall Street and mega-corporations don't want "socialism." The idea that Joe, the Senator from MBNA, Biden is a "socialist" is fall-on-the-ground-laughing hilarious.
Bullshit. It's some kind of corporate socialism, or kleptocracy; it's sure as HELL not the "capitalism" that's based on free markets and free people making decisions in their own best interests (including altruistic ones). Sorry you're tasked with defending the good reputation of socialism. Must be a lot of work.
Oh, so you don't believe the Marxists would still rely on their corrupt media friends once they got into power? Seems to me that anyone who mattered in those circles would have nothing to fear in such a restructuring.
It's conjecture, sure, but man... have you read anything in The Green New Deal?
It's unreal. It would take the kind of tinpot authoritarian dictatorship the modern day press looks like they serve already. All the need is an actual dictator now!
I didn't watch much TV before COVID and have watched a good bit since and really amazed at the celebrity-Democratic Party love fest. Parks and Rec ended with guest shots by President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden. I never realized the convergence before COVID.
O, thank you for telling me. Boyd's entire output is quite remarkable. All different books, quite a few made into films..yets he is not that well known.
They're conformists. Face it, we're not talking Mensa material here. I sometimes think that a barely par intelligence is a requisite for the job. The last one who knew anything about American history was Chris Matthews. And, the irony is rich, they are materialistic as all get out- second homes in the Hamptons or Vineyard. De rigueur Vuitton satchels. Range Rovers. I see them in Nantucket. Most are solidly middle class who think they've made it big. That's the travesty of all this. They really are useful idiots.
Maybe you need to stop writing for a bit and do some reading, because the Democrats have never been "socialist" in their entire 250-year history, and the mainstream media are owned by 5 mega-corporations whose hatred for anything that even looks like socialism is glaringly evident to anyone able to step outside their ideological bubble long enough to see reality.
It's precisely that kind of "any media not Fox are flaming socialists" nonsense that allows the kind of corruption of journalistic integrity outlined above to not only exist but flourish. It also allows people to cling to their confirmation bias of choice by giving them a specious excuse for rejecting some reported news. The go-to reason people used with regard to the Hunter Biden story? "It's the NY Post."
Matt is right—not one soul on the team determined to erase the Post story has stated that the emails are fake, which in the journalism I worked would have been right of the top of the question list. The goal is clearly to kill the messenger, not prove the validity of the message.
You seem to have read "If we let the left socialist + media take over this country" as "media = left socialists". I didn't take that away from what he said at all. I took the AND construction as inherently meaning that they were different things, by the implication that needed to act in concert.
After what happened to Bernie Sanders, the only democratic socialist in this basket of mostly deplorables, how can you say that the media and Democratic party are joining socialism? Quite the opposite is happening.
They are being moved far left. Biden had to "sell the soul of America" and get all the socialists endorsement to get in there. He will have to pay up. And the middle of the road Democrats are all old and on their way out. So if you're rooting for socialism, and they get in, you will be happy.
Not sure how you can connect the press with socialism when mainstream media used the same tactics Taibbi just wrote about to destroy the Sanders campaign. How do you reconcile that?
Quite easily. If they had thought Sanders could have won back then, they would have supported socialism then. They didin't believe it would work. They found out it will work. They needed the far left so they are caving in to it. It's about power ultimately and the Democrats have moved so far left already, if it works, they are all for it. They are ultimately globalist socialists, they jsut didn't think they could sell that back then.
The DNC could care less about socialism. They exist only to serve the corporate elite. They'd rather have four more years of Trump, than a Sanders presidency. They made that abundantly clear. The DNC establishment absolutely hates Sanders and everything he stands for.
You say, "Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party". I am not familiar with that party, so please reply where it is located and how to join. Seriously, for educated people that have replied to this comment, the word 'socialism' is misused to just something that the commenter does not like.
The word "socialism" is not misused. We don't yet have Russia under Stalin. That' s not how it happens. It happens slowly, first by controlling the media. Everybody discussing this sees the writing on the wall, so drop the semantics. The Democrats are moving so far left, it's ridiculous. And why don't you move somewhere you can sign up? Lots of places to go.
Joined "the socialist party?" Is that a joke? MSM has consistently dumped on democratic socialists, and the supposedly "left-leaning" MSM is just doing dictation for the Dem party establishment. Socialism isn't in the mix, except as a distraction.
Here is your problem. I assume you are a socialist. Yes, when they thought the power lay with moderate democrats, they've worked against them and against Sanders. But the democrats have a huge problem now. They have sold their soul to the socialists and they expect to be paid. No way they could win without the promises made to them. The media has gone with them and will. So you'll be happier soon.
You assume wrongly. I’m not a socialist. And the party sold its soul to billionaires, corporations, and Wall Street. The party will continue to ably and eagerly serve capitalism. And the small number of people in the party who are actual progressives, or even socialists, will continue to be marginalized. Socialists have no power over Biden’s Democratic Party. Your thesis here is ludicrous. And the media, mostly owned by billionaires and corporations, will continue to prop up neoliberal centrism, and further marginalize the actual left.
I'm not wrong and you sound like a socialist. And no my thesis is NOT wrong. I agree the media MIGHT try to swing things back to the middle, but not if the power lies elsewhere. Y ou watch.
Mainstream media are journalists that have followed the same rules of journalism for over 200 years. You need to corroborate the stories that you put in print. There are journalist standards that are followed. Fox News is an echo chamber for every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. Between Fox News and other right-wing outlets, there is no fact-checking or questioning what is put out there. In the liberal news media, you see other outlets like the Washington Post correcting or clarifying a story that appears, for instance, in the New York Times. Trump says that any story that criticizes him or takes issue with something he has said is "Fake News." And you believe Trump, a profilagate liar.
They might as well have. The Democrats have moved so far left they are unrecognizable and the media is an arm of their party. Not a news organization. Journalism is dead. That's how I figure. I'm more concerned about the state of the media in this country than anything else, yet it's hard to differentiate the media from this far left agenda anymore. Again, Black Lives Matter which Democrats have totally embraced JUST removed their Marxist garbage from their website (and they advocate for the demise of the nuclear family). That's how I figure it. And mostly I'm watching how they are operating.
The portion of the D party that is "The Squad" and the Antifa and BLM factions are not really the Democrat party. Once the Democrats get back in office, they'll find a way to remove that radical side or silence them somehow. At least that's what they think. I think the D's are going to have a much harder time with their new creation than the R's had with their Tea idiots.
The entire Democrat party embraced BLM, if not Antifa. And Biden has enlisted Sanders and Beto, and AOC to positions in his administration. Sold his "soul of America" just to get elected. Problem is he'll have to pay up. Huge problem. Said nothing for two months while they burned cities and killed people, even black policemen. And yes, they are going to have a LOT more trouble with that creation. Hopefully we keep them out.
The Democratic Party, with the exception of a narrow range of cultural issues for which they maintain at least rhetorical commitment to the left, has moved dramatically to the right for decades . . . going back to when the DLC took and locked down power. The Dems are the party of Wall Street, big tech, and the MIC. They want nothing to do with "socialism," and tolerate democratic socialists to some degree on occasion. The idea of even returning to some kind of post-Keynesian economic platform for policy (which would be miles from "socialism") isn't even imaginable with the rapacious capitalists who continue to wield power in the party. BLM has no power in the party, even if it was a marxist organization. It isn't. Founders identified as "marxist," but never had "marxism" as part of the organization "platform." And they are not "advocating the demise of the nuclear family." They oppose the "requirement" of the historical nuclear family and support "extended family" and "villages" within the black communty. Pretending BLM is a marxist organization is silly. Pretending BLM dictates the Democratic Party is sillier. Pretending socialism is in the cards for the Biden Democratic Party is down-right stupid.
After reading Mary Anastacia O'Grady's recent column in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that censorship in left-wing nations is almost always cheered on by the legacy press until they realize, too late (a la Robespierre or Trotsky), that it's a fire that consumes all in its path with no sense of loyalty, I'm no longer sure that there will be historians in the future to hold today's "journalists" to account for their failures.
What I am fairly sure of is that people in Beijing are having a good laugh at the our witch trials over "Russian" influence.
Take away its nukes, and Russia is Asia's Italy: A former imperial power living off its former glory and generating hard cash by pimping its history to foreign tourists.
Russia has a shrinking population, an economy that's downsizing even faster, and a government bureaucracy more ossified and corrupt than the Soviet regime it replaced. The only thing keeping China from simply marching north through Manchuria and taking the oil and gas fields in Sibera is the aforementioned nukes - and the knowledge that anti-Russian paranoia is a useful distraction in the West.
Russia is no strategic threat, and the Moscow bogeyman is a sad reflection on the intellect and courage of one of our two major political parties and its allies in the national media.
China is the threat - and we have the media studiously avoiding any mention of the China ties in the Hunter Biden scandal.
Notice that India is pivoting from its alliance with Russia to the U.S. India is under direct threat from Beijing - and is realizing that Moscow is basically useless in applying pressure to China. If anything, Russia is now China's puppet state - China's gas and oil purchases represent the single largest foreign cash infusion into Russia's coffers.
China is staking territorial claims throughout the South Pacific, claiming lands that belong to Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Guinea and more. It's military is now far greater than Russia's, and they're pouring billions into it every year and make no secret of their willingness to do whatever they want.
Russia is yesterday's threat; China is tomorrow's.
Be nice to have a media that actually cares to look into that - but the NYT, WaPo, etc., are more interested in growing their brand in China than in accurately or honestly reporting on it.
Ahaha, I came to the comments just to post this as well. It sounds trivial compared to the serious reporting Matt does but a phrase like "the first pebbles from the towering Matterhorn of bullshit that was the Steele dossier" just makes my day complete.
"In other words, this is a story about media commentators citing intelligence sources who in turn are citing media commentators citing intelligence sources." Wait! That was exactly the same technique used to get the Steele Dossier circulated. There seems to be a pattern emerging and it seems to be by many of the same actors.
The first time around, it was so transparent to me that I thought it was all a joke that would easily be seen through. Now I find it frightening and discouraging.
But the light is there at the end of the tunnel. I fully and truly believe that you can only fool most of the people most of the time, and that we're nearing the tipping point. Every event moves us more in the direction of most of society completely losing their faith in the press.
Every time I get discouraged, a new long term acquaintance who is liberal tells me why they are starting to doubt... now if I could just red pill my father in law, that would give me real confidence. Mother in law red pilled herself by watching Fox News for balance, and this was a woman who was 100% about Obama for 8 years.
And considering that I have specifically (including in these comment pages) said that Trump isn't the disease or the symptom, he's the experimental chemotherapy the people have elected - with why they think the country is sick enough to warrant such a cure being the million dollar question.
Considering the extreme Democrat bias of every major TV network besides Fox, it would take an extreme Republican bias to achieve "balance". But having said that, Fox is not as right-biased as the rest of the networks are left-biased. They actively include people with left-wing views, even if they mostly disagree with them, but at least they are included.
I agree that there is light at the end of the tunnel (and it is not the train), and we have Trump -- more specifically, TDS -- to thank for it. TDS has driven the Democrat-media establishment so insane that they are now blatantly lying about easily verifiable facts, spreading obvious conspiracy theories ("It's the Russians! THE RUSSIANS!!!! Putin Putin Putin!"), and clearly exposing their double-standards by downplaying or outright censoring (well-sourced) news harmful to Biden after gleefully promoting (sketchily-sourced) news harmful to Trump.
It's so clear, obvious, and in our faces that it's almost impossible to ignore. Anyone with a little bit of an open mind can see all this going on and see that it is wrong. I do believe a reckoning is coming -- either the media companies will figure it out for themselves and clean house, or they'll just continue on wrecking their own credibility until no one watches them anymore and they go bankrupt.
That is, of course, assuming Trump wins (and Republicans at least hold the Senate), which I believe is very likely in spite of polls saying otherwise -- as in 2016, those polls are wrong. If Biden wins, they will have been validated, and nothing will change.
This is also how we got lied into Iraq. Intelligence quietly leaked selective, sometimes fabricated information to the press, then those same intelligence officials cited the press, as if they had independently verified what they were reporting.
He is saying that because he thinks that by saying he likes Biden people will think the opposite that he really wants Trump, so vote Biden. Everything is down the rabbit hole now.
If you're using longevity as your scorekeeper, dinosaurs have us mammals beat all ragged. Of course cockroaches put them to shame. Be nice if we could figure out how to make an unstable political system work better.
Dude, this is off topic, but mammals have existed for 178 million yrs, and the dino run was only 165. Don't underestimate your brethren. You're on the money abut cockroaches
Once human-machine interfaces are through brain-implanted wires and warmaking is by robot, oligarchy will certainly be fully sustainable. History is not a steady move in one direction and the most successful countries in 100 years may be the ones that allow the most experimental biohacking innovation.
You're an intelligent man, Matt. Do you really want the leftie crew to have total control over the federal government, including federal law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, in addition to their current domination of media, Big Tech, the universities, the entertainment industry, and other institutions that shape and filter information?
It is not a "leftie crew" but a hard-right globalist/neoliberal crew. Somewhat different from a hard-right nationalist/tradcon crew, but still hard right.
You don’t have to worry about “leftie” being in charge of these institutions. These are neoliberals. They want to continue helping wealthy people figure out ways to get over on the rest of us, they just want to talk about social justice while they do it. So they can feel like they’re doing kind, important work. You don’t have anything to worry about, sleep well.
Would this be the same "leftie crew" constantly pushing pro-war/pro-cold war propaganda, refusing to even attempt M4A, not doing the Green New Deal, saying that "nothing will fundamentally change," opting to increase police budgets instead of "defunding," smearing any actually Leftists like Sanders at the drop of a hat (until they fall in line with the moderates), being too cowardly to even legalize marijuana at a Federal level? Because that's who's running things in the Democratic Party. They just use the popularity of people like AOC to promote themselves, not because they want her or her like-minded colleagues calling any of the shots.
Please, let me know when the Leftie crew with any real power comes along.
Last I checked Norway is a capitalist country, with a stock exchange, private businesses, private ownership of property....Which is way different that Venezuela or Cuba. Let us not confuse "social programs" for socialism.
It's frowned upon to go to "the dictionary" in a debate, but Merriam-Webster has a very cogent definition of socialism: "It refers to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control." Of course, even in a Libertarian Capitalist system there's still some social control -- are there any pure anarchies in the world? So what's missing in the definition are four words at the end: "...for the greater good." And what's the greater good? In a functioning democracy, it's what the majority decides is the greater good. This ends today's lesson in 7th grade Civics. :-)
I wish the US HAD a functioning democracy, instead of the electoral college, the Senate and an ossified oligarchy. Which works out in real time to a total absence of representational national government. The US is largely governed by a tiny conservative, white, rural minority, in cahoots with the corporate oligarchs who have no real social principles and are happy to run with the reactionary conservatives as long as they support shrunken, ineffective government, money treated as "speech" and endless tax breaks for the elites and corporations.
“ Last I checked Norway is a capitalist country, with a stock exchange, private businesses, private ownership of property....Which is way different that Venezuela or Cuba.”
Venezuela has both a stock exchange and private property. It is also “way different” than Cuba.
If you are not yet another troll you really should inform yourself before throwing out platitudes.
Exactly. A highly taxed welfare state, the Scandinavian countries, is not the same thing as a nation with state ownership of industries or a massive regulatory regime. In some important ways, Sweden is seen as having freer markets/less regulatory interference than the United States.
You must love fossil fuels, considering they're a cornerstone of your country's wealth. Our lefties DETEST all fossil fuels, fishing, timber....basically your entire economy. Yet they just lurve lurve lurve to hold Norway up as an example of socialized living.
It's not irrational to view fossil fuels as a necessary evil, and therefore to work to eliminate their position as the basis of the economy. Since they are finite and damaging to the earth, you're going to have to abandon them some day anyway, so why not be an adult and plan for it?
By setting arbitrary deadlines and controls, before the technology exists to replace them? That's the current Green New Deal. Costs? Don't matter! You call that being an adult, do you?
what Norway has is a small population with large oil revenues....sorta like Saudi Arabia... so yeah, you're good... but then what happens when carbon-based fuels are banned? see how well things work without that big oil revenue...
What happens, as I observed for myself in Norway, is that a society that has planned for decades for the exhaustion or prohibition of fossil fuels will switch to sustainable energy locally, and other economic bases nationally. I kinda wish I were Norwegian, but I'm not, so I do what I can to implement that plan here in the U.S.
Norway + Sweden + Denmark combined barely have the population of New York state. And are much more homogeneous in language, culture, race, religion, work ethic...there is no comparison.
I lived in a social democratic country in Europe for 5 years.. It was lovely. I had a chance to visit your country, including Gerainger Fjord, possibly the most beautiful sight I've ever seen, and your people are happy and lovely. But for Europe to be Europe, America has to be America.
Have you not noticed where virtually all of the most important innovation for humanity has come from? Your lifestyle depends on the creativity unleashed by the open and unconstrained American system. Telephones. Mass production of automobiles. Televisions. Moon landing. Smart phones. Polio vaccine. Siemens makes some very nice MRI machines, but where were they invented? 3D printing. Enhanced agriculture for higher yields. There are very good reasons why Elon Musk is here rather than Canada or Europe.
For the world to feed itself and live well with ever increasing population, it needs American innovation. Norway is generous with foreign aid, but American innovation is much more important for helping the developing world. Social democracy does not produce adequate innovation.
The so-called "social democracy" of postwar Western Europe was largely underwritten by American taxpayers, who provided a nuclear shield that kept the USSR at bay. While the Euros crowed about providing health care and education to their kids, and many of them condemned the U.S. military, they did all this knowing that they could spend almost nothing on their own defense, thanks to the American taxpayer. The free defense Western Europe received courtesy of the Americans is the largest invisible welfare in all of history.
Venezuela didn't collapse because it was attacked by the "US Empire", it collapsed because oil prices dipped below $100/bbl and the government was run so poorly it couldn't fund itself. Now, in deference to the capitalists, Maduro ran that country into the ground explicitly as a result of his socialist outlook, but in deference to your position, social programs do work.
Via sanctions? Yes, absolutely. The human costs have been high, but ultimately those sanctions merely amplified and accelerated the collapse, they did not start it. And nations do not have any autonomy, bar that which they can secure for themselves; states exist in anarchy. Read your Thucydides for more information.
Spent some time in Norway. Lovely place. Imagine...sometime back, a movement to eliminate the world's dependence on oil. There go the petro dollars that have funded all of the social programs.
Regarding taxes...I think this is one of the misunderstood aspects of American tax policy regarding health care. Taxes in many European countries must be higher to account for health care. Americans fear "socialized" medicine and trust "insurance companies" - an interesting trade off to say the least.
Agreed, Norway has managed its windfall nicely - they were an early innovator in Electric Vehicles (remember Think EV?). The US, now a net exporter of petroleum products due to fracking, with a reduced carbon foot print...is going to eliminate the same industry that has a.) reduced energy costs and carbon footprint b.) eliminated dependence on the unstable middle east for oil c.) while also increasing lower and middle class jobs? I'm all for clean air/water/recycling but keeping a balanced perspective on reality is helpful.
Every journalist knows that the underlying documents published from the Hunter Biden laptop are real. They may be released without proper context, they almost certainly are omitting the more exculpatory materials, but ever journalist knows that the ecomms being released are authentic. And they are newsworthy. Based on the timing of the Pozharskyi emails regarding deliverables and the Boies Schiller emails regarding current status of UK and Ukraine investigations of Burisma, it is clear that the Bidens' claims that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and that Hunter's hiring had nothing to do with Ukrainian investigations of Burisma are just flatly false. It seems increasingly probable - not certain, but probable - that in fact Biden caused Shokin to be fired precisely because of his son's work for Burisma.
Also know that every person who says "Hunter is not running for president" or "Fine, I definitely won't vote for Hunter, then" is an unserious person. These allegations are newsworthy because they aren't actually about Hunter, they are about his father. Nobody would care if Hunter was just a fuck up smoking meth, or hawked vitamin supplements that don't work, or even stole money from business partners. It's the perception that people know that the way to bribe Joe Biden is to pay his son.
Missing from this essay, unless I'm thick and didn't see it, is discussion of the underlying incentives for journalistic malpractice. Unless you assume the journalistic and editorial professions are hopelessly, innately corrupt, then it's worth it to ask WHY this is happening.
We are living in an age where every faction has a kit for building "these machines" and once you've bought a tool, you tend to find reasons to use it. It's a shame that the Responsible National Media are one of the factions, because they really shouldn't be, or they should be a neutral and demilitarized faction whose purpose is to expose the others. But we're also living in an age where financial pressures embedded in the global economy has every industry under stress (except maybe search engine companies). The media need clicks or impressions or whatever, or they run a distinct risk of ceasing to exist altogether, or in a weakened and useless form.
I think most of your recent columns, documenting the madness and groupthink of current events, can be sourced to underlying stressors...a slow-rolling economic crisis (or crises) decades in the making, that's expressing itself in these culture wars. Matt, you did an outstanding job back in the aughts figuring out and explaining what was going on in the Great Recession. I'd love it if you'd return to that beat for a while, since I think it might explain and expose many reasons for the madness you're describing.
One could argue that the "underlying incentives" issue is at the core of "Hate, Inc." You can't expect Matt to go into a detailed meta-analysis of media malpractice in every article, especially when it's been explored at length both in his book and other articles like:
The incentive is pretty easy. We live in a world where basically all media (90%) is controlled by 6 companies. This is a massive deviance from what it was just 20 years ago. In addition to that board member cross membership is such that essentially only a handful of corporations dictate everything we consume. In addition, the majority or media personalities are running around like high school students trying to please the people higher on the money wheel from themselves in hopes of scoring the big contract. So they have pretty much zero integrity.
To assume they are not all in it together is ludicrous. The corporate and financial elite class have us over a barrel (literally as the only way to survive is to consume mass amounts of whiskey nightly), and are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yes, we need more analysis of the underlying causes. Hate, Inc I think doesn't necessarily explain it because this phenomenon can be seen outside the media industry, with Twitter being today's clear example, and yet tech firms are economically the opposite of the media - long term massive expansion. There's no economic crisis there, they don't "chase clicks" - in fact they can lose money for decades and investors will just keep shovelling dollars into the furnace in case startup Whatever-ly turns into the next Facebook. Yet their staff have become as extreme and polarised as the NYT.
Note: this was NOT the case 10 years ago. I worked at Google in the early years and if anything it was strongly libertarian. Very much a case of "give the people access to information and step back" as a dominating attitude and culture. That culture is clearly lost now.
So the underlying issues are psychological and not to do with the economics of the media business.
One common theory is that the new financial pressures you mention are due to having to optimize for views and clicks. So to go back to objectivity (if it ever existed), we need to come up with a better system to transfer cash to journalists. Is Substack an example of one?
You're not wrong. We are in a long emergency caused by a decline of EROEI to the economy which is strangling capitalism as we know it. In the meantime we grow more and more dysfunctional.
I don’t understand all the confusion surrounding the argument he’s making here. Put aside for a moment where the laptop came from, if Biden’s campaign truly wanted this story to go away, they should either 1) Back up their current stance of dismissiveness and hostility by laying out precisely why the contents in some of the documents are false or 2) Concede that some of the material might be accurate, then answer questions about it.
The overwhelming response in the media to focus solely on the origins of the documents, instead of their accuracy, only helped this story linger.
The 2016 MSM response to the WikiLeaks emails releases was how horrible that hacked emails were shared...but little about the content. Of course, there wasn’t as concerted an effort to censor them then as we see now, but emphasis has too often been on how the information surfaced and far less on the information contained. Truth delivered through despicable means is still truth. One cannot close one’s eyes to truth no matter the messenger.
It is most likely that I would not agree with Mr. Taibbi on many domestic policies however I have been following his writings since the '"Rolling Stones "disgraceful and deceitful reporting on the UVA non-rape story. His non-emotional and rational insights into the failures of the "Stones" reporting was noteworthy. I trust his reporting.
I don't know anyone who believes any of the progressive corporate media bullshit anymore. They are rendering themselves irrelevant except as a carnival side show.
Lucky you. I know more people who drink the left media coolaid than the right. I think both sides of the media are trash and Taibbi is one of the few good viewpoints left in this hellish landscape.
The most fun part of all of this is watching so many people claim without evidence that this is Russian disinformation, only a short time after they have accused Trump of making nearly every claim he makes "without evidence". (They also claim he's making several claims he doesn't actually make, also "without evidence").
«only a short time after they have accused Trump of making nearly every claim he makes "without evidence"»
As I keep repeating, that is based on a cognitive bias well known to propaganda professionals: that most people believe in hearsay, even if there is no evidence, if it is repeated several times by several (apparently independent) sources.
This cognitive bias was fairly reliable for gossip in a village: if one person gossiped "I saw Bill kiss Betty!" one could be skeptical, but if 5-10 different people said it, it was likely to be true. In latin it was called the "vox populi vox dei" principle.
It critically relies on the repeated sources being independent of each other, but propaganda campaigns either use explicit "talking point" memos, or arise spontaneously as propagandists on the same side repeat each other's "talking points" even without explicit memos.
"propaganda campaigns . . . use explicit "talking point" memos" . That's the Democrat party standby: propaganda. Get it repeated enough times and the greatest lie can become truth.
What a difference a year makes. Contrast the media's "kid glove" treatment of Biden now with this exhaustive article published in Politico on August 2 of 2019: Biden Inc.
Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.
I'm a writer and I can tell you that the most distressing thing about the last four years has been what has happened to journalism in this country. Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party. It's breath-taking what they are doing. I think this corruption of the media is linked to the corruption of the Democrat party (and particularly people like Biden). I don't see how you separate the two anymore. If people don't like Trump's personality, he'll be gone soon, but if we let the left socialist + media take over this country, it will be unrecognizable in a week.
Bari Weiss said it best "a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper[the NYT]: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else."
I don't think they believe it is the truth. They believe that thinking this way and forcing others to do the same will create a Utopia. Their utopia is actually a dystopia. Everything that has ever tried to utopia thing has all met the same bad ending. I think the Democrats have become a cult. You know where you can never leave or have any communication with the outside world. That is the very definition of a cult.
If they want to push it to the logical conclusion, they'll end up under siege in their own filthy cities and descend into barbarism as they fight among themselves.
That's something I'd rather endure than more of this.
Probably a good time to flee the cities.
Except who wants them in the suburbs. :) They are already moving to Texas and Florida and messing up those states.
Correction: It's something I'd rather THEY endure, than more of this.
Well said, Gary.
Time for a literary detour in support 😀 In 1949 C. S. Lewis published an essay which in part had this to say on good intentions:
"...Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience..."
From that always interesting website: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/12/19/intentions/
I have read that before as well. It is spot on! Because they think they are doing by us, they actually do really bad and not suffer any guilt.
Always love that quote, and trot it out when people are excoriating businesses for being "greedy". Greed is ugly, and can hurt people...but it can also generate positive externalities, AND it's a straightforward, easily understood motivation.
Unlike the vile, amorphous beast* that is "For your own good."
*-it's positively Lovecraftian!!
That’s a terrifying assertion.
I actually have what I think is a new insight here. I watched "The Social Dilemma". We all kind of know the press is in a bubble, and we all kind of know that social media, especially Twitter, feeds that. So it's not news that journos are in a social media-fed bubble.
But watching that documentary gave me a new respect for how potent that effect can be, and how it can be stimulated and encouraged by the AI algorithms of social media. Social media already lets you pick your friends etc, but the algos specifically feed you content they align with your previous thinking. So these journos are being forced deeper into the "rabbit holes" by the algos themselves. It explains a lot.
This particularly resonated with me when I listened to the full interview of Trump by Lesley Stahl. Stahl was asking questions that I couldn't even agree with the premise of (and were in some cases demonstrably untrue, like asking Trump why he said that Gretchen Whitmer should be locked up. How could Stahl be that in the dark about reality? For the same reasons that basic lies that are repeated often enough by the media become accepted truth - and all fed by social media and journos in one big awful feedback loop.
Noam Chomsky wrote about this long ago in Manufacturing Consent. It was a thing even before social media.
To see this more clearly, it's helpful to understand that this is why people start to believe in "flat Earth" theories, too. They get fed the videos and content by social media algorithms so much they believe that it's true. If it's that easy to convince someone the Earth is flat, how hard can it be to make Trump seem evil, as inherently flawed as he already is?
The Social Dilemma is a great documentary on the subject of social media. Two solid books for learning more about that:
‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power’ by Shoshana Zuboff
and
‘Digital Disconnect‘ by Robert McChesney
"The Social Dilemma" was fascinating and nobody would argue with most of it. Toward the end, though, you realize their solution is regulating content so that things that are "objectively true, like climate change and race issues" are represented right. My solution is to delete Facebook once my son gets my pictures off it for me. And I don't Twitter. I may try to promote my work on Parler. It's all conservatives right now, though they want liberals who care about free expression. My other solution is to recommend to every conservative to not put their children in public universities until they can prove that all ideas are allowed and that it functions as universities are supposed to. Stop paying until they stop censoring conservatives. This is the biggest issue of our times.
When the crowd is yelling "lock her up," referring to Whitmer, Trump says: "lock them all up." It's not demonstrably untrue.
https://youtu.be/1Z70ReLhMgU
Still, the tone of her questioning and the direct quote attributed was disingenuous.
I hate the guy, but I don't want to see anyone get this kind of bullshit treatment by the press -who are directly in cahoots with a network of wrongdoers that have been scamming roughshod for decades.
We're talking war crimes, bribes, kickbacks, murders, you name it.
If Darth Vader walked out on stage and revealed that they had been pulling the strings for 60 years and they've finished their Death Star, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
Glad you posted the video, so that people can see that when the crowd said that, Trump shook his head and did a dismissive hand wave. And that Stahl's statement is demonstrably untrue:
Donald Trump:
Why would I lock her up? No, but why didn’t you say, “You don’t want to lock up the Governor?” Of course I don’t want to lock her up. Why would I lock her up?
Lesley Stahl:
Because you were in front of a rally of people saying it, encouraging it.
Your video link clearly demonstrates that to be untrue.
Here's another one, btw: Stahl quoted Trump as saying something begging suburban women to like him, because that's how the media reported his statements from the video below. Watching the video makes it clear that she'd not herself watched it, but relied on those media reports. She literally misquotes him to make it sound worse, adding "please, please" at the end of his phrasing, making it demonstrably untrue.
Trump says something demonstrably untrue in this also, as Gary will appreciate me pointing out. He claims 52% of women voted for him when that was the number for white women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebsapm04flQ
People selectively believe the rantings of their political opponents, but never the rantings of their political allies. Why is this the case?
Dude... I was a lifelong Democrat. After the Obama administration's god-awful foreign policy, and the free pass the banking industry received after orchestrating yet another market collapse and on TOP of all that the DNC/Clinton campaign/illegal spying and four years straight of bogus lying... I'll never vote D again. The fact that the media giants are all trying to smooth over Biden's greasy handiwork is enough for me to know that it's against my interests if he gets in office.
I won't vote R... but I won't vote D either.
They all work for enough common funding that I just can't.
I voted Libertarian -they don't have enough sway to make things worse and at this point that's all I want -for things to not get worse. Vote your conscience and feel good about that.
You might want to reword that to make your point. Obviously people believe the rantings of their political allies. If you're trying to make some point that Trump is my political ally you should consider that the median person drawn to a Matt Taibbi substack is more likely anti-anti-Trump than pro-Trump.
Even if Trump did say she should be locked up (which I doubt he did), does anyone think that he means it?
Why not ask Biden why he used an overtly, (albeit archaic,) racist term when talking about black kids... He referred to "roaches" and quickly walked it back a little to smooth it over before anyone realized what was said.
Why not ask about that?
Why not ask about his REALLY inappropriate comments to female CHILDREN???
"I can't wait to see you dance in another few years."
Are you fucking serious???? I mean, these aren't minor slights -they're majorly WRONG. Yet, it gets smoothed over and explained away as if YOU the listener were mistaken.
Such bull shit. Burn it all down.
I share your frustration about the dishonesty in the mainstream media, but they are so incredibly far from joining the socialist party. This is readily apparent when you go back over the coverage (and sometimes complete lack thereof) of Bernie Sanders' campaigns, for instance. These media companies are owned by multi-billionaire capitalists with like minded interests. (Jeff Bezos for WaPo, Rupert Murdoch owns Fox, Bill Gates and GE own MSNBC, etc. Billionaires, by nature, abhor socialism.)
Are they often aligned with the Democratic Party? Absolutely. More broadly, they always toe the "establishment line," and aim to be good stewards of the corporate American empire/military industrial complex. This is why they hate Trump. Even when he's not carrying out anti-establishment policy in any genuine way, he's saying stuff out-loud that is rarely said, like the fact that corporate interests in the military industrial complex push a pro-war bias on our foreign policy consensus (and he's 100% correct).
I'm no fan of Trump, but as I moved further Left (I voted for Bernie in the primary) I began to see how biased the media is against Trump and even his supporters. But how is that possible? If the media "joined the socialist party," and I moved further Left, how did I uncover this bias against Trump?
It's simple: they share a similar bias *against* the Left. I started seeing all the lies about Bernie Sanders' supporters, that they were mainly white and male. I saw them hinting at this similarity between Bernie and Trump's base, knowing full well their viewers would get the hint that "Bernie Bros" must be racist. I saw how quick CNN was to publish a story about Bernie allegedly saying something sexist, and how the only sources for this story were his main political opponent's staffers. I saw them grill Bernie over praising Castro's literacy program by asking him why he praises dictators, when he was saying something Obama previously got a pass for.
All this made me rethink damn near everything the MSM has said about Trump, and by extension, what they haven't said about the Democratic Party (and Neocon, never-Trumper war-hawks like John Bolton). I can guarantee right now that whatever you're seeing on these channels that appears to be "far-Left" is all cultural or social. They'll promote BLM all day every day, cancel people for using the wrong terminology that was acceptable just yesterday, show their support for tearing down statues, etc. Whether people think it's good or terrible that they do these things, one thing is clear: these issues do not negatively impact their bottom line, in any way, shape, or form. It does not at all reshape the economy, which is the number one goal of socialists, agree with them or not.
When you see the MSM pulling this shit, just think of Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a Kente cloth while doing not a fucking thing about the issue for which she is showing her faux-solidarity.
Some establishment reporter reproached Trump with not following Bolton's advice. "If I'd followed his advice we'd be in World War Six by now." He went on to say it was useful to walk into a negotiation with Bolton by his side "because they'd see that maniac coming in with me" and the talks went much more smoothly.
Establishment media is practically owned by the military industrial complex and the national security state. I don't take anything they say about foreign policy seriously.
Unfortunately, though, a lot of people think that's just a conspiracy theory, and end up so woefully misinformed they think Bolton's biggest sin was not snitching on Trump sooner.
"Billionaires, by nature, abhor socialism."? I would disagree. Witness the gifts of billions to support the far-left. I do not know why, except perhaps guilt and a type of innocence that being sheltered in a mansion might bring about. My observation is that most (not all) of the "very rich" are far enough left to be supportive of what would be considered socialist or near-socialist causes (BLM identifies itself as Marxist and look at the millions upon millions they have received).
A great book is "The Smear" by Sharyl Attkisson in which she names the names of those giving dark money, both left and right. Its about 95 percent left that get named, yet she is a mainstream CBS reporter without an axe to grind.
Here's the question, though: are they giving this money to organizations who's number one goal is restructuring the economy? I'm guessing not. The founders of BLM are self-proclaimed Marxists, but the majority of the movement (which is largely decentralized) is centered around racial issues.
Billionaires aren't donating to promote socialism. Maybe there's some weird exception I don't know about, but they're donating to Leftist/Liberal causes because it gets those same people off their back, and just like corporate media and corporate Dems that co-opt these movements, they chose to focus on politically correct symbolism and virtue signalling that won't challenge their power, but will improve their image.
Can't imagine voting for Bernie but at least you see what's happening with the media here. Bernie made an unholy alliance with Biden, but the media and corrupt Democratic machine have done the same media crap to Bernie.
“Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party.”
I’ll concede your point that they’ve “abandoned any semblance of the truth,” fine.
But trying to equate our corporate owned, mainstream media, as ‘socialist’ is a delusion. The US corporate news media is a perfect embodiment of capitalism!
Actually the media is a marriage of State Capitalism and Leftist ideology, properly termed “fascist”. Nothing free market about the legacy media, unlike SubStack.
True. What we are seeing is much more akin to fascism.
True, but they give cover to the socialists for now, hoping to keep them in line. But if Biden takes power and gets the Senate too, we will see Big Tech, Wall Street go to battle with their socialist allies. Remember what happened every time with communism. You can read about it in Gulag Archipelago ... the political egalitarians were killed (literally) by the political authoritarians. Their eventual breakup is a sure thing if they take power. They cannot exist side by side for long. Unless Big Tech and Wall Street figure out how to keep their socialist/progressive allies inline without ruining the economy and taking their wealth.
Incredible we are even having this conversation in America. That tells you enough right there.
Excellent insights here.
Ugh... we're actually having a conversation about this sort of horse shit HERE on US soil.
WTF
Really doesn't matter how it functions itself presently, does it, if it's an arm of the Democrat socialist party.
If Democrats are socialists then I am a ballerina. They may use Stalinist propaganda methods, but they are not socialists. Even the avowed socialist Bernie is not a socialist by European standards. And leave Marx alone, he didn’t deal with stupid cultural wars.
Right. Black Lives Matter just removed from their mission statement that they promoted Marxism and the demise of the nuclear family. Black Lives Matter is indistinguishable from the Democrat party now. But it's been coming a long time. Get your point shoes out.
So you’re acknowledging my point that our mainstream media operates on Capitalistic principles - the same as any other large profit-driven corporation in America.
So they're simultaneously Socialist and Capitalist?
No. I'm saying how they operate right now is irrelevant because they are controlled by (and behaving like) the socialist left and they are suppressing news. And lots of it as Matt's article clearly illuminates. They do it because they back a globalist/socialist philosophy themselves (90% of the media are leftists or close--not to mention university professors and Hollywood--the biggest purveyors of [bad]information) -- and because mostly the people who have opposed Trump have been DC establishment swamp creatures and that includes much of mainstream media, though they may regret it soon enough.
Ah, so it has to be either or.
It doesn't really. They can be capitalist cunts who would love to be cozy with a crummy operation modeled after the CCP or USSR.
ALL of the hallmark signs are there.
They need to make $$$$ and draw salaries for themselves-people had to do that in the USSR too. Socialism just means the govt is signing your paycheck, to a greater or a lesser degree. Capitalism just means people pay you for stuff w/out govt acting as competition.
No, the capitalists are just trying to appease the socialists for now. Trump is too dangerous for the capitalists. the question is can the capitalists take power and keep the socialists in check. Not sure about that. We will see.
Not socialist, just severely biased.
It's a process. Nations don't just suddenly become socialist or communist. The first thing totalitarians do is control the media. They've been doing that for a long time but now they don't even pretend to be objective anymore. Big companies can want socialism or globalism for their own power and that's what's happening presently. Wall Street money is going to Biden, not Trump. It's a process. If we don't stand up to it, we'll be sorry.
Don't forget: you can vote your way IN to it, but you have to shoot your way out.
Wall Street and mega-corporations don't want "socialism." The idea that Joe, the Senator from MBNA, Biden is a "socialist" is fall-on-the-ground-laughing hilarious.
Bullshit. It's some kind of corporate socialism, or kleptocracy; it's sure as HELL not the "capitalism" that's based on free markets and free people making decisions in their own best interests (including altruistic ones). Sorry you're tasked with defending the good reputation of socialism. Must be a lot of work.
Oh, so you don't believe the Marxists would still rely on their corrupt media friends once they got into power? Seems to me that anyone who mattered in those circles would have nothing to fear in such a restructuring.
It's conjecture, sure, but man... have you read anything in The Green New Deal?
It's unreal. It would take the kind of tinpot authoritarian dictatorship the modern day press looks like they serve already. All the need is an actual dictator now!
I didn't watch much TV before COVID and have watched a good bit since and really amazed at the celebrity-Democratic Party love fest. Parks and Rec ended with guest shots by President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden. I never realized the convergence before COVID.
Kathleen, I just finished reading that William Boyd book you mentioned a while back... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/72148.Restless
Fascinating. The "manipulate reality" game has been played a long time, it appears!! 😀
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
O, thank you for telling me. Boyd's entire output is quite remarkable. All different books, quite a few made into films..yets he is not that well known.
Well, been obvious to me for a while but nothing like it's been in the last four years. :) Good you started watching!
They're conformists. Face it, we're not talking Mensa material here. I sometimes think that a barely par intelligence is a requisite for the job. The last one who knew anything about American history was Chris Matthews. And, the irony is rich, they are materialistic as all get out- second homes in the Hamptons or Vineyard. De rigueur Vuitton satchels. Range Rovers. I see them in Nantucket. Most are solidly middle class who think they've made it big. That's the travesty of all this. They really are useful idiots.
Maybe you need to stop writing for a bit and do some reading, because the Democrats have never been "socialist" in their entire 250-year history, and the mainstream media are owned by 5 mega-corporations whose hatred for anything that even looks like socialism is glaringly evident to anyone able to step outside their ideological bubble long enough to see reality.
It's precisely that kind of "any media not Fox are flaming socialists" nonsense that allows the kind of corruption of journalistic integrity outlined above to not only exist but flourish. It also allows people to cling to their confirmation bias of choice by giving them a specious excuse for rejecting some reported news. The go-to reason people used with regard to the Hunter Biden story? "It's the NY Post."
Matt is right—not one soul on the team determined to erase the Post story has stated that the emails are fake, which in the journalism I worked would have been right of the top of the question list. The goal is clearly to kill the messenger, not prove the validity of the message.
You seem to have read "If we let the left socialist + media take over this country" as "media = left socialists". I didn't take that away from what he said at all. I took the AND construction as inherently meaning that they were different things, by the implication that needed to act in concert.
*that they needed to
After what happened to Bernie Sanders, the only democratic socialist in this basket of mostly deplorables, how can you say that the media and Democratic party are joining socialism? Quite the opposite is happening.
They are being moved far left. Biden had to "sell the soul of America" and get all the socialists endorsement to get in there. He will have to pay up. And the middle of the road Democrats are all old and on their way out. So if you're rooting for socialism, and they get in, you will be happy.
180 degrees wrong.
I know you are.
Not sure how you can connect the press with socialism when mainstream media used the same tactics Taibbi just wrote about to destroy the Sanders campaign. How do you reconcile that?
Quite easily. If they had thought Sanders could have won back then, they would have supported socialism then. They didin't believe it would work. They found out it will work. They needed the far left so they are caving in to it. It's about power ultimately and the Democrats have moved so far left already, if it works, they are all for it. They are ultimately globalist socialists, they jsut didn't think they could sell that back then.
The DNC could care less about socialism. They exist only to serve the corporate elite. They'd rather have four more years of Trump, than a Sanders presidency. They made that abundantly clear. The DNC establishment absolutely hates Sanders and everything he stands for.
please, wake up to the new world. They will take whatever gives them power and however they have to get it...
Here's hoping! The Democrats are just factually not socialists. This is kinda hilarious.
I agree. Trump is temporary. There has now been a standard set with msm almost universally that is impossible to reverse.
You say, "Mainstream always leaned left but they have abandoned any semblance of the truth and joined the socialist party". I am not familiar with that party, so please reply where it is located and how to join. Seriously, for educated people that have replied to this comment, the word 'socialism' is misused to just something that the commenter does not like.
The word "socialism" is not misused. We don't yet have Russia under Stalin. That' s not how it happens. It happens slowly, first by controlling the media. Everybody discussing this sees the writing on the wall, so drop the semantics. The Democrats are moving so far left, it's ridiculous. And why don't you move somewhere you can sign up? Lots of places to go.
I completely agree. Putin is right by saying “Information is power”.
Joined "the socialist party?" Is that a joke? MSM has consistently dumped on democratic socialists, and the supposedly "left-leaning" MSM is just doing dictation for the Dem party establishment. Socialism isn't in the mix, except as a distraction.
Here is your problem. I assume you are a socialist. Yes, when they thought the power lay with moderate democrats, they've worked against them and against Sanders. But the democrats have a huge problem now. They have sold their soul to the socialists and they expect to be paid. No way they could win without the promises made to them. The media has gone with them and will. So you'll be happier soon.
You assume wrongly. I’m not a socialist. And the party sold its soul to billionaires, corporations, and Wall Street. The party will continue to ably and eagerly serve capitalism. And the small number of people in the party who are actual progressives, or even socialists, will continue to be marginalized. Socialists have no power over Biden’s Democratic Party. Your thesis here is ludicrous. And the media, mostly owned by billionaires and corporations, will continue to prop up neoliberal centrism, and further marginalize the actual left.
I'm not wrong and you sound like a socialist. And no my thesis is NOT wrong. I agree the media MIGHT try to swing things back to the middle, but not if the power lies elsewhere. Y ou watch.
Mainstream media are journalists that have followed the same rules of journalism for over 200 years. You need to corroborate the stories that you put in print. There are journalist standards that are followed. Fox News is an echo chamber for every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike. Between Fox News and other right-wing outlets, there is no fact-checking or questioning what is put out there. In the liberal news media, you see other outlets like the Washington Post correcting or clarifying a story that appears, for instance, in the New York Times. Trump says that any story that criticizes him or takes issue with something he has said is "Fake News." And you believe Trump, a profilagate liar.
Joined the Socialist Party? How do you figure?
They might as well have. The Democrats have moved so far left they are unrecognizable and the media is an arm of their party. Not a news organization. Journalism is dead. That's how I figure. I'm more concerned about the state of the media in this country than anything else, yet it's hard to differentiate the media from this far left agenda anymore. Again, Black Lives Matter which Democrats have totally embraced JUST removed their Marxist garbage from their website (and they advocate for the demise of the nuclear family). That's how I figure it. And mostly I'm watching how they are operating.
The portion of the D party that is "The Squad" and the Antifa and BLM factions are not really the Democrat party. Once the Democrats get back in office, they'll find a way to remove that radical side or silence them somehow. At least that's what they think. I think the D's are going to have a much harder time with their new creation than the R's had with their Tea idiots.
The entire Democrat party embraced BLM, if not Antifa. And Biden has enlisted Sanders and Beto, and AOC to positions in his administration. Sold his "soul of America" just to get elected. Problem is he'll have to pay up. Huge problem. Said nothing for two months while they burned cities and killed people, even black policemen. And yes, they are going to have a LOT more trouble with that creation. Hopefully we keep them out.
The Democratic Party, with the exception of a narrow range of cultural issues for which they maintain at least rhetorical commitment to the left, has moved dramatically to the right for decades . . . going back to when the DLC took and locked down power. The Dems are the party of Wall Street, big tech, and the MIC. They want nothing to do with "socialism," and tolerate democratic socialists to some degree on occasion. The idea of even returning to some kind of post-Keynesian economic platform for policy (which would be miles from "socialism") isn't even imaginable with the rapacious capitalists who continue to wield power in the party. BLM has no power in the party, even if it was a marxist organization. It isn't. Founders identified as "marxist," but never had "marxism" as part of the organization "platform." And they are not "advocating the demise of the nuclear family." They oppose the "requirement" of the historical nuclear family and support "extended family" and "villages" within the black communty. Pretending BLM is a marxist organization is silly. Pretending BLM dictates the Democratic Party is sillier. Pretending socialism is in the cards for the Biden Democratic Party is down-right stupid.
After reading Mary Anastacia O'Grady's recent column in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that censorship in left-wing nations is almost always cheered on by the legacy press until they realize, too late (a la Robespierre or Trotsky), that it's a fire that consumes all in its path with no sense of loyalty, I'm no longer sure that there will be historians in the future to hold today's "journalists" to account for their failures.
What I am fairly sure of is that people in Beijing are having a good laugh at the our witch trials over "Russian" influence.
Take away its nukes, and Russia is Asia's Italy: A former imperial power living off its former glory and generating hard cash by pimping its history to foreign tourists.
Russia has a shrinking population, an economy that's downsizing even faster, and a government bureaucracy more ossified and corrupt than the Soviet regime it replaced. The only thing keeping China from simply marching north through Manchuria and taking the oil and gas fields in Sibera is the aforementioned nukes - and the knowledge that anti-Russian paranoia is a useful distraction in the West.
Russia is no strategic threat, and the Moscow bogeyman is a sad reflection on the intellect and courage of one of our two major political parties and its allies in the national media.
China is the threat - and we have the media studiously avoiding any mention of the China ties in the Hunter Biden scandal.
Notice that India is pivoting from its alliance with Russia to the U.S. India is under direct threat from Beijing - and is realizing that Moscow is basically useless in applying pressure to China. If anything, Russia is now China's puppet state - China's gas and oil purchases represent the single largest foreign cash infusion into Russia's coffers.
China is staking territorial claims throughout the South Pacific, claiming lands that belong to Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, Australia, New Guinea and more. It's military is now far greater than Russia's, and they're pouring billions into it every year and make no secret of their willingness to do whatever they want.
Russia is yesterday's threat; China is tomorrow's.
Be nice to have a media that actually cares to look into that - but the NYT, WaPo, etc., are more interested in growing their brand in China than in accurately or honestly reporting on it.
^^^ This! A thousand times this.
***Towering Matterhorn of bullshit***
Ahaha, I came to the comments just to post this as well. It sounds trivial compared to the serious reporting Matt does but a phrase like "the first pebbles from the towering Matterhorn of bullshit that was the Steele dossier" just makes my day complete.
That was beautiful.
I third that sentiment!!! - loved the phrase - what can be vulgar is appropriate in some cases, and I think it certainly is in this one.
"In other words, this is a story about media commentators citing intelligence sources who in turn are citing media commentators citing intelligence sources." Wait! That was exactly the same technique used to get the Steele Dossier circulated. There seems to be a pattern emerging and it seems to be by many of the same actors.
The first time around, it was so transparent to me that I thought it was all a joke that would easily be seen through. Now I find it frightening and discouraging.
But the light is there at the end of the tunnel. I fully and truly believe that you can only fool most of the people most of the time, and that we're nearing the tipping point. Every event moves us more in the direction of most of society completely losing their faith in the press.
Every time I get discouraged, a new long term acquaintance who is liberal tells me why they are starting to doubt... now if I could just red pill my father in law, that would give me real confidence. Mother in law red pilled herself by watching Fox News for balance, and this was a woman who was 100% about Obama for 8 years.
Watching Fox News for balance is like taking arsenic to cure your syphilis.
Your metaphor is terrible considering that millions take toxic poisons to cure cancer.
And considering that I have specifically (including in these comment pages) said that Trump isn't the disease or the symptom, he's the experimental chemotherapy the people have elected - with why they think the country is sick enough to warrant such a cure being the million dollar question.
Considering the extreme Democrat bias of every major TV network besides Fox, it would take an extreme Republican bias to achieve "balance". But having said that, Fox is not as right-biased as the rest of the networks are left-biased. They actively include people with left-wing views, even if they mostly disagree with them, but at least they are included.
I agree that there is light at the end of the tunnel (and it is not the train), and we have Trump -- more specifically, TDS -- to thank for it. TDS has driven the Democrat-media establishment so insane that they are now blatantly lying about easily verifiable facts, spreading obvious conspiracy theories ("It's the Russians! THE RUSSIANS!!!! Putin Putin Putin!"), and clearly exposing their double-standards by downplaying or outright censoring (well-sourced) news harmful to Biden after gleefully promoting (sketchily-sourced) news harmful to Trump.
It's so clear, obvious, and in our faces that it's almost impossible to ignore. Anyone with a little bit of an open mind can see all this going on and see that it is wrong. I do believe a reckoning is coming -- either the media companies will figure it out for themselves and clean house, or they'll just continue on wrecking their own credibility until no one watches them anymore and they go bankrupt.
That is, of course, assuming Trump wins (and Republicans at least hold the Senate), which I believe is very likely in spite of polls saying otherwise -- as in 2016, those polls are wrong. If Biden wins, they will have been validated, and nothing will change.
This is also how we got lied into Iraq. Intelligence quietly leaked selective, sometimes fabricated information to the press, then those same intelligence officials cited the press, as if they had independently verified what they were reporting.
I bet Putin thinks we're all insane. "I don't have to do a damned thing, and I get both credit and blame for all of it! Americans are crazy!"
haha China must be feeling ripped off right now. All that cash they've dumped here.
Oh I think China is licking its chops.
Putin says he's perfectly happy if Biden wins. Is that election interference, I wonder?
He is saying that because he thinks that by saying he likes Biden people will think the opposite that he really wants Trump, so vote Biden. Everything is down the rabbit hole now.
I hope we are aren't learning that centrally controlled oligarchy is the more stable and sustainable political system.
If you're using longevity as your scorekeeper, dinosaurs have us mammals beat all ragged. Of course cockroaches put them to shame. Be nice if we could figure out how to make an unstable political system work better.
Dude, this is off topic, but mammals have existed for 178 million yrs, and the dino run was only 165. Don't underestimate your brethren. You're on the money abut cockroaches
Damn, knew I should have led with "primates."
Once human-machine interfaces are through brain-implanted wires and warmaking is by robot, oligarchy will certainly be fully sustainable. History is not a steady move in one direction and the most successful countries in 100 years may be the ones that allow the most experimental biohacking innovation.
You're an intelligent man, Matt. Do you really want the leftie crew to have total control over the federal government, including federal law enforcement and the intelligence agencies, in addition to their current domination of media, Big Tech, the universities, the entertainment industry, and other institutions that shape and filter information?
What could go wrong?
It is not a "leftie crew" but a hard-right globalist/neoliberal crew. Somewhat different from a hard-right nationalist/tradcon crew, but still hard right.
You don’t have to worry about “leftie” being in charge of these institutions. These are neoliberals. They want to continue helping wealthy people figure out ways to get over on the rest of us, they just want to talk about social justice while they do it. So they can feel like they’re doing kind, important work. You don’t have anything to worry about, sleep well.
Would this be the same "leftie crew" constantly pushing pro-war/pro-cold war propaganda, refusing to even attempt M4A, not doing the Green New Deal, saying that "nothing will fundamentally change," opting to increase police budgets instead of "defunding," smearing any actually Leftists like Sanders at the drop of a hat (until they fall in line with the moderates), being too cowardly to even legalize marijuana at a Federal level? Because that's who's running things in the Democratic Party. They just use the popularity of people like AOC to promote themselves, not because they want her or her like-minded colleagues calling any of the shots.
Please, let me know when the Leftie crew with any real power comes along.
Sincerely,
Part of the Leftie Crew
Last I checked Norway is a capitalist country, with a stock exchange, private businesses, private ownership of property....Which is way different that Venezuela or Cuba. Let us not confuse "social programs" for socialism.
It's frowned upon to go to "the dictionary" in a debate, but Merriam-Webster has a very cogent definition of socialism: "It refers to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control." Of course, even in a Libertarian Capitalist system there's still some social control -- are there any pure anarchies in the world? So what's missing in the definition are four words at the end: "...for the greater good." And what's the greater good? In a functioning democracy, it's what the majority decides is the greater good. This ends today's lesson in 7th grade Civics. :-)
I wish the US HAD a functioning democracy, instead of the electoral college, the Senate and an ossified oligarchy. Which works out in real time to a total absence of representational national government. The US is largely governed by a tiny conservative, white, rural minority, in cahoots with the corporate oligarchs who have no real social principles and are happy to run with the reactionary conservatives as long as they support shrunken, ineffective government, money treated as "speech" and endless tax breaks for the elites and corporations.
“ Last I checked Norway is a capitalist country, with a stock exchange, private businesses, private ownership of property....Which is way different that Venezuela or Cuba.”
Venezuela has both a stock exchange and private property. It is also “way different” than Cuba.
If you are not yet another troll you really should inform yourself before throwing out platitudes.
Exactly. A highly taxed welfare state, the Scandinavian countries, is not the same thing as a nation with state ownership of industries or a massive regulatory regime. In some important ways, Sweden is seen as having freer markets/less regulatory interference than the United States.
So wait, you like “the U.S. empire” or you don’t like it?
You must love fossil fuels, considering they're a cornerstone of your country's wealth. Our lefties DETEST all fossil fuels, fishing, timber....basically your entire economy. Yet they just lurve lurve lurve to hold Norway up as an example of socialized living.
It's not irrational to view fossil fuels as a necessary evil, and therefore to work to eliminate their position as the basis of the economy. Since they are finite and damaging to the earth, you're going to have to abandon them some day anyway, so why not be an adult and plan for it?
By setting arbitrary deadlines and controls, before the technology exists to replace them? That's the current Green New Deal. Costs? Don't matter! You call that being an adult, do you?
what Norway has is a small population with large oil revenues....sorta like Saudi Arabia... so yeah, you're good... but then what happens when carbon-based fuels are banned? see how well things work without that big oil revenue...
What happens, as I observed for myself in Norway, is that a society that has planned for decades for the exhaustion or prohibition of fossil fuels will switch to sustainable energy locally, and other economic bases nationally. I kinda wish I were Norwegian, but I'm not, so I do what I can to implement that plan here in the U.S.
Norway + Sweden + Denmark combined barely have the population of New York state. And are much more homogeneous in language, culture, race, religion, work ethic...there is no comparison.
I lived in a social democratic country in Europe for 5 years.. It was lovely. I had a chance to visit your country, including Gerainger Fjord, possibly the most beautiful sight I've ever seen, and your people are happy and lovely. But for Europe to be Europe, America has to be America.
Have you not noticed where virtually all of the most important innovation for humanity has come from? Your lifestyle depends on the creativity unleashed by the open and unconstrained American system. Telephones. Mass production of automobiles. Televisions. Moon landing. Smart phones. Polio vaccine. Siemens makes some very nice MRI machines, but where were they invented? 3D printing. Enhanced agriculture for higher yields. There are very good reasons why Elon Musk is here rather than Canada or Europe.
For the world to feed itself and live well with ever increasing population, it needs American innovation. Norway is generous with foreign aid, but American innovation is much more important for helping the developing world. Social democracy does not produce adequate innovation.
The so-called "social democracy" of postwar Western Europe was largely underwritten by American taxpayers, who provided a nuclear shield that kept the USSR at bay. While the Euros crowed about providing health care and education to their kids, and many of them condemned the U.S. military, they did all this knowing that they could spend almost nothing on their own defense, thanks to the American taxpayer. The free defense Western Europe received courtesy of the Americans is the largest invisible welfare in all of history.
Venezuela didn't collapse because it was attacked by the "US Empire", it collapsed because oil prices dipped below $100/bbl and the government was run so poorly it couldn't fund itself. Now, in deference to the capitalists, Maduro ran that country into the ground explicitly as a result of his socialist outlook, but in deference to your position, social programs do work.
Via sanctions? Yes, absolutely. The human costs have been high, but ultimately those sanctions merely amplified and accelerated the collapse, they did not start it. And nations do not have any autonomy, bar that which they can secure for themselves; states exist in anarchy. Read your Thucydides for more information.
Spent some time in Norway. Lovely place. Imagine...sometime back, a movement to eliminate the world's dependence on oil. There go the petro dollars that have funded all of the social programs.
Regarding taxes...I think this is one of the misunderstood aspects of American tax policy regarding health care. Taxes in many European countries must be higher to account for health care. Americans fear "socialized" medicine and trust "insurance companies" - an interesting trade off to say the least.
Agreed, Norway has managed its windfall nicely - they were an early innovator in Electric Vehicles (remember Think EV?). The US, now a net exporter of petroleum products due to fracking, with a reduced carbon foot print...is going to eliminate the same industry that has a.) reduced energy costs and carbon footprint b.) eliminated dependence on the unstable middle east for oil c.) while also increasing lower and middle class jobs? I'm all for clean air/water/recycling but keeping a balanced perspective on reality is helpful.
just to be clear, I truly hope that Norway will be ok when oil runs out and glad there are preparations for that time...
I'm jealous. Honestly, the population is just so high here and the GDP so... distractingly large that it's a slut fest of piggies.
So sad.
You are starting to think like an economist...
" Bo Erickson of CBS, got raked over the coals by the most aggressive Heathers in the giant high school that is America"
I'm not sure how to put this but I find it ironic that the the US media has become what the Soviet media was in the USSR.
Every journalist knows that the underlying documents published from the Hunter Biden laptop are real. They may be released without proper context, they almost certainly are omitting the more exculpatory materials, but ever journalist knows that the ecomms being released are authentic. And they are newsworthy. Based on the timing of the Pozharskyi emails regarding deliverables and the Boies Schiller emails regarding current status of UK and Ukraine investigations of Burisma, it is clear that the Bidens' claims that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and that Hunter's hiring had nothing to do with Ukrainian investigations of Burisma are just flatly false. It seems increasingly probable - not certain, but probable - that in fact Biden caused Shokin to be fired precisely because of his son's work for Burisma.
Also know that every person who says "Hunter is not running for president" or "Fine, I definitely won't vote for Hunter, then" is an unserious person. These allegations are newsworthy because they aren't actually about Hunter, they are about his father. Nobody would care if Hunter was just a fuck up smoking meth, or hawked vitamin supplements that don't work, or even stole money from business partners. It's the perception that people know that the way to bribe Joe Biden is to pay his son.
Missing from this essay, unless I'm thick and didn't see it, is discussion of the underlying incentives for journalistic malpractice. Unless you assume the journalistic and editorial professions are hopelessly, innately corrupt, then it's worth it to ask WHY this is happening.
We are living in an age where every faction has a kit for building "these machines" and once you've bought a tool, you tend to find reasons to use it. It's a shame that the Responsible National Media are one of the factions, because they really shouldn't be, or they should be a neutral and demilitarized faction whose purpose is to expose the others. But we're also living in an age where financial pressures embedded in the global economy has every industry under stress (except maybe search engine companies). The media need clicks or impressions or whatever, or they run a distinct risk of ceasing to exist altogether, or in a weakened and useless form.
I think most of your recent columns, documenting the madness and groupthink of current events, can be sourced to underlying stressors...a slow-rolling economic crisis (or crises) decades in the making, that's expressing itself in these culture wars. Matt, you did an outstanding job back in the aughts figuring out and explaining what was going on in the Great Recession. I'd love it if you'd return to that beat for a while, since I think it might explain and expose many reasons for the madness you're describing.
One could argue that the "underlying incentives" issue is at the core of "Hate, Inc." You can't expect Matt to go into a detailed meta-analysis of media malpractice in every article, especially when it's been explored at length both in his book and other articles like:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-new-york-times-is-no-longer-the
The journalistic and editorial professions are hopelessly, innately corrupt. That is why all of us pay to read Mr. Taibbi.
It depends on the incentives. At least theoretically it's possible to engineer a system where "objectivity" is rewarded.
Nature is that system, but the timescale is multigenerational.
The incentive is pretty easy. We live in a world where basically all media (90%) is controlled by 6 companies. This is a massive deviance from what it was just 20 years ago. In addition to that board member cross membership is such that essentially only a handful of corporations dictate everything we consume. In addition, the majority or media personalities are running around like high school students trying to please the people higher on the money wheel from themselves in hopes of scoring the big contract. So they have pretty much zero integrity.
To assume they are not all in it together is ludicrous. The corporate and financial elite class have us over a barrel (literally as the only way to survive is to consume mass amounts of whiskey nightly), and are laughing all the way to the bank.
Yes, we need more analysis of the underlying causes. Hate, Inc I think doesn't necessarily explain it because this phenomenon can be seen outside the media industry, with Twitter being today's clear example, and yet tech firms are economically the opposite of the media - long term massive expansion. There's no economic crisis there, they don't "chase clicks" - in fact they can lose money for decades and investors will just keep shovelling dollars into the furnace in case startup Whatever-ly turns into the next Facebook. Yet their staff have become as extreme and polarised as the NYT.
Note: this was NOT the case 10 years ago. I worked at Google in the early years and if anything it was strongly libertarian. Very much a case of "give the people access to information and step back" as a dominating attitude and culture. That culture is clearly lost now.
So the underlying issues are psychological and not to do with the economics of the media business.
One common theory is that the new financial pressures you mention are due to having to optimize for views and clicks. So to go back to objectivity (if it ever existed), we need to come up with a better system to transfer cash to journalists. Is Substack an example of one?
You're not wrong. We are in a long emergency caused by a decline of EROEI to the economy which is strangling capitalism as we know it. In the meantime we grow more and more dysfunctional.
I don’t understand all the confusion surrounding the argument he’s making here. Put aside for a moment where the laptop came from, if Biden’s campaign truly wanted this story to go away, they should either 1) Back up their current stance of dismissiveness and hostility by laying out precisely why the contents in some of the documents are false or 2) Concede that some of the material might be accurate, then answer questions about it.
The overwhelming response in the media to focus solely on the origins of the documents, instead of their accuracy, only helped this story linger.
«The overwhelming response in the media to focus solely on the origins of the documents, instead of their accuracy»
As M Taibbi points out, same with the Hillary/DNC emails and the Weiner laptop emails, where the entire focus was "russian interference".
The 2016 MSM response to the WikiLeaks emails releases was how horrible that hacked emails were shared...but little about the content. Of course, there wasn’t as concerted an effort to censor them then as we see now, but emphasis has too often been on how the information surfaced and far less on the information contained. Truth delivered through despicable means is still truth. One cannot close one’s eyes to truth no matter the messenger.
"Therefore, by the transitive property of whatever"
Matt, this is just outstanding!
"Because...and..." This is how we explain things to the four year old and she accepts it.
It is most likely that I would not agree with Mr. Taibbi on many domestic policies however I have been following his writings since the '"Rolling Stones "disgraceful and deceitful reporting on the UVA non-rape story. His non-emotional and rational insights into the failures of the "Stones" reporting was noteworthy. I trust his reporting.
I don't know anyone who believes any of the progressive corporate media bullshit anymore. They are rendering themselves irrelevant except as a carnival side show.
Lucky you. I know more people who drink the left media coolaid than the right. I think both sides of the media are trash and Taibbi is one of the few good viewpoints left in this hellish landscape.
The most fun part of all of this is watching so many people claim without evidence that this is Russian disinformation, only a short time after they have accused Trump of making nearly every claim he makes "without evidence". (They also claim he's making several claims he doesn't actually make, also "without evidence").
«only a short time after they have accused Trump of making nearly every claim he makes "without evidence"»
As I keep repeating, that is based on a cognitive bias well known to propaganda professionals: that most people believe in hearsay, even if there is no evidence, if it is repeated several times by several (apparently independent) sources.
This cognitive bias was fairly reliable for gossip in a village: if one person gossiped "I saw Bill kiss Betty!" one could be skeptical, but if 5-10 different people said it, it was likely to be true. In latin it was called the "vox populi vox dei" principle.
It critically relies on the repeated sources being independent of each other, but propaganda campaigns either use explicit "talking point" memos, or arise spontaneously as propagandists on the same side repeat each other's "talking points" even without explicit memos.
"propaganda campaigns . . . use explicit "talking point" memos" . That's the Democrat party standby: propaganda. Get it repeated enough times and the greatest lie can become truth.
What a difference a year makes. Contrast the media's "kid glove" treatment of Biden now with this exhaustive article published in Politico on August 2 of 2019: Biden Inc.
Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.
By BEN SCHRECKINGER August 02, 2019
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/02/joe-biden-investigation-hunter-brother-hedge-fund-money-2020-campaign-227407