It literally does not matter (much) who is acting as the President of America as he is not in charge. The power structure in America has nothing to do with the official flow charts, or that "piece of paper" formerly known as the "US Constitution". The President merely presides over one the several leading power centres. He is not the 'decider'.
Entirely correct. This is particularly true of US foreign policy. US foreign policy and its long term geopolitical goals is the province of the US State Department and the CIA, not the President, and they in turn decide policy with the Washington think-tanks funded by military and industrial conglomerates.
Obama found this out very quickly when he became President, and so did Trump. The difference is that Obama did as he was told, but Trump did not!
Trump’s ‘mistake’ was that he thought it was the President decided who to negotiate with and who to make a deal with and this was seen as very dangerous to all those people and the massive industry that makes money through never-ending wars and conflict. Trump’s carrot and stick approach might lead to peace breaking out and peace is anathema to the warmongers in Washington.
The people who are the most to blame for this situation are the media, whose job is to tell the truth and expose the totally corrupted US foreign policy military establishment, now being run by the unelected ‘permanent state’. Not only do they not do this, but they themselves have been co-opted and serve as a weapon against anyone who opposes the unelected state or threatens to expose it, even within their own industry, and Assange is the exemplar of this.
The awful shocking reality for me, is that it is the so called ‘liberal’ news outlets who people once trusted; The New York Times, NBC, The Guardian and the BBC etc, have done the most to destroy public trust in the media. They are constantly caught lying, yet carry on as though they are the beacons of democracy and somehow represent a ‘free and honest’ press. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Since the invasion of Granada and Panama and the first Gulf War etc, I have been telling anyone I can: “Do not trust any media at all, particularly regarding foreign policy! Presume they are lying and then try to work your way back to the truth by seeking out those marginalised journalists who have been pushed out for telling the truth and opposing the narrative. John Pilger, Chris Hayes, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal and even a comedian ‘working out of his garage whilst stoned’, Jimmy Dore, (who after all has got more right than TNYT for ****st’s sake!).
Im not sure we can ever return to a mainstream media that is honest, in my lifetime! I think we are seeing an end of a very historically short experiment in western style free-market capitalist democracy, which finally consumed and destroyed itself.
Excellent, on-point post. Pat Buchanan has been on this since the 90s. The DC foreign policy elites feared Donald Trump more than anything because he was threatening to bypass these corrupt bureaucrats and put an 'America First' doctrine in place (& expose their corruption). That's why they had a collective heart attack over Trump speaking directly with Zelenskyy, and the second impeachment. The American people deserve better.
Do we? Do the American people deserve better? The results of the midterms sadly make me think that we are, civically speaking, too lazy to really engage.
Do our legislators really legislate anymore? Or do "the leaders" and non-elected staff staple together 1,000 unread pages which get passed and the money flows ---- no auditing, of course.
And even though it is a Constitutional co-equal branch of government, no judicial decision is legit if it rules against your interest, right? Just ask our President who totally ignores Supreme Court rulings to impose his Party's will.
Watching the limited reporting of the Chinese protests, and the "non-singing" of the Iranian team at the World Cup --- we American people ARE a privileged bunch, and that includes our protesting class which is always whining about something, will never be satisfied, and will never be at risk like those brave Chinese and Iranians. I am disgusted. Freedom-wise, we have it so easy and we take it so for granted.
Finally, I agree that the elites will do whatever it takes to take out any threat to their system (which it is now obvious they almost completely control). Relentless against Trump. Obvious against Musk. We little people are just along for the ride.
Look no further than "biden", a demented senile shell of the man who he was once was, aka the "leader of the free world" as good evidence of what I just said.
Truly. I remember Joe Biden well, never liked him, but he's been there since forever. Joe Biden was smart, and very articulate. He was wrong about everything too, but nevermind.
That Joe Biden is clearly gone. That will happen to most of us if we live long enough. What's bizarre though is how a normal person can watch him struggling hard to form a sentence or to even find the exit in a familiar place, and STILL think, "My President. The leader of the free world!", is perfect proof that partisanship will destroy ones capacity to reason, to even see clearly.
Yep, and we can (strangely) add Nixon to the list!
He pulled out of Vietnam and opened the door to China, both against the wishes of the State Department and the CIA.
What happened to Nixon? He was impeached and resigned based on leaks from the deputy director of the FBI (Deep Throat) who was leaking to The Washington Post, who (in my opinion) knew who he was all along. Nixon’s sin of course was the cover-up and errr...swearing, not the break-in , and today it would be almost politics as usual. But, my point is that it is eerily similar to the Trump story! A President who worked outside of the ‘accepted’ wishes of the unelected state.
Compare Nixon’s and Trump’s ‘sins’ (that the media destroyed them for) against Johnson’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s! It’s almost laughable! Nobody EVER gets impeached for committing provable war crimes and lying the US into an illegal war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent pple! But, they get impeached and totally destroyed for relatively minor misdemeanors that the media pretends is somehow more relevant!
"His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore."
Good to remind us Americans of this grim history, but I do want to amend it just a bit: the people of Laos and Cambodia remember those bombings. I know this from talking to some of the descendants of those who experienced it.
Well of course, Nixon was elected on the promise of ending the war, and had effectively reduced the US presence to minimum ground troops and had handed that role back to the South Vietnamese. Saigon fell after Nixon had resigned over the Watergate scandal so we will never know if he would have sent US troops back into Vietnam, but Ford was happy to pull out and end US involvement.
You are correct to point out Nixon’s war crimes, which makes my point. That is not what he was impeached for! He was impeached and resigned over an amateurish break-in by a bunch of clowns which he then tried to cover up.
US presidents are criminalised for trying to end military conflicts and reduce the military budget it seems...
*Some guy was actually Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, who did a reasonable job, but who was totally outshone by the Greenwald. Glenn said later that he did not even care who his debating partner was.
At the reception Glenn refused to shake Hayden's blood-soaked paw.
** I am often censored at Reddit too. Of course I am.
A few weeks ago, I would have agreed with you. However, I recently read the article Murray wrote about the US proxy war in Ukraine (published on the front page of the NY Post), and IMHO, he has sold his soul to whatever force controls The Official Narrative of the collective West regarding Ukraine. I am very disappointed to see that, on this issue at least, Murray seems to be nothing more than an eloquent propagandist with little regard for the facts and truth.
Dream on. If you compare his article to the facts, not the lines Zelensky is assigned to recite--which the western media dutifully transcribe--you will find the disconnect to be stunning. I suggest you spend a little time listening to analyses by Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris on the Duran, or reports by Brian Berletic on the New Atlas, or interviews with the likes of Douglas MacGregor or Scott Ritter.
One of my best friends, a very smart guy, a world traveller, believes every single lie and he loses his mind when I present a counternarrative or actual facts that 99% of the time he never even heard of. When I do that he simply rejects it with a wave of his hand. He won't even look at it.
Propaganda is now proven science. Millions of people can be led, and quickly to believe insane nonsense and then two years, or even two weeks later, believe something else. They won't even remember believing it either.
Don't leave now!!! Not when, "There is light in the end of the tunnel". - General Westmoreland.
"For over 20 years, government officials told the American people that they were winning the war in Indochina. Americans heard encouraging words about the war as far back as 1950, when General MacArthur predicted that 150,000 top French troops should end this war in 4 months." In 1951 President Harry Truman assured Americans that "the Communist attacks in Indochina have been stopped." Similar statements came from President Eisenhower, Attorney General Robert Kennedy Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and of course, President Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps the most famous optimistic statement was made by U.S. commander, General Westmoreland, who assured Americans, "there is light in the end of the tunnel."
I'm not sure it was "necessary" to blame Russia for the misfired ordinates hitting Poland, but Ukraine really did take Kherson back. That's not a tale that's just what happened.
Well, Miles could cite hundreds of breathless MSM missives, missives from an MSM which has been shown to lie shamelessly whenever any US foreign policy interests are involved, but which we can surely trust implicitly this time.
If I had mentioned Alex to my credulous True Believer friend, he would have bellowed out, "WHO?", by which he means, "Is he on the state approved list of honest interlocutors?" Followed by, "Who vetts his facts?" lol
I mean what you say is right as far as it goes of course. But there is a lot missing.
The good thing about the current phase of the Internet is that it’s easy to find true information. This is despite the fact that the production of such information is generally unremunerated. The media has been lying or getting it wrong in support of the official narrative ever since it was chiselling hieroglyphics into pyramids.
But it doesn’t only get it wrong where there is a political interest or a reader bias. Not every story is political or entertaining. It also gets simple facts wrong. It is and always has been thoroughly unreliable.
For this reason, msm is losing viewers generally and news becomes entertainment, but not very good entertainment, so also loses readers or viewers. You make it sound like they are targeting their viewership well. You neglect that this viewership is constantly shrinking.
The problem here is twofold and neither part is due to the media and you can be sure that no back to the future scenario is ever on the cards.
Firstly, for some reason these institutions retain some prestige and we continue taking them seriously. Why? Why not just acknowledge that what CNN says is no more likely to be intelligent, correct or insightful than some random guy’s opinion that you bump into in a bar? Because this is the truth. To actively seek out that nonsense is a sign of mental illness.
Secondly, people are reading and engaging with the news now much MORE than before. They are mostly disagreeing with msm articles and sharing the views of actual experts. We have a population which is vastly better informed on virology for example than ever before. Well enough informed to actually know more than some professionals. Isn’t that interesting? Some curiosity in mankind has been unleashed by the social web. People care, organise and fight.
But there are two problems with that. The most basic one is the appalling level of education. This is not new but it’s still a disgrace. The second one is that the governing paradigm has broken down and political leadership is in very short supply. So people don’t trust institutions and so they cannot rely on them to effect change. Although we are probably more united than ever, we also feel powerless.
This is a problem of imagination. It is not the fault of the media.
Going forward, new monetisation methods for web content may help to sustain a professional industry and incentivise reliability. This may also have perverse effects though. In any case, until politicians come up with a new story, it little matters how the media present them. We are not being denied a real choice, it is just being made obvious to us that we never had one.
Most people still believe in what I call the "CNN view of the world", which of course barely corresponds to reality.
Zelenskiy is a billionaire. "How did that happen?" I like to ask people that. First they tell me that's not true, then they get mad, then they forget about it.
I have lived and worked in Ottawa long enough to get some glimpses of the real power structure and how it really flows.
Trudeau enacted the EMA (emergency measure act) within a day of 'biden' calling him. Most Canadians will swear, and believe, that "Canada is an independent country."
Do you really believe that you know more about medicine than a doctor?
Yeah you do.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
—Isaac Asimov
Now excuse while I do my own kidney surgery. LOL LOL LOL
I am the last person you should be saying that too. But nevermind.
When you fly do you often run and bang the cabin door as you scream, "We need to gain altitude now!! You are flying too low! Don't believe what you learned in flight school! Believe me!"
IOW you believe all kinds of bullshit, including what you just said. And that on the basis of a few words that I said.
Your epistemology is shit.
"Pilots? What the fuck do they know about flying anyway?" Bull (shit) Hubbard
We have to keep in mind that not everyone is right 100% of the time. Not even you. When I was a young man it was understood that politics and religion were each realms apart from normal discourse. On these it was expected that even those of similar upbringing might differ radically. It's been perplexing to see this accommodation change so radically in the space of a generation.
See the Youtube-banned documentary "Ukraine on Fire" on Rumble for a Taibbi-like explanation of the background, and how the war was promoted to both Ukraine and NATO by our MIC, permanent government.
The only thing I'd add (but possibly not for this particular opening) is the modernization of Smith-Mundt that basically ensured the media would be infiltrated by The Swamp. Now we have CIA/FBI 'experts' on every show telling us exactly what to think.
The "modernization" of the domestic anti-propaganda law (Smith Mundt) in 2013 effectively put the State Dept (and CIA, who has done this extensively in foreign countries) in charge of the Official Narratives spewed by what is now State Media. LEGALLY.
It is Operation Mockingbird on steroids, much more advanced than what the Gestapo or Stasi ever did. Propaganda at its finest!
The fact check on this is that this change Obama made only applied to The Voice of America foreign programming. I don’t know what to believe. It is one of those memes that hasn’t gone away and people believe what they want to about it.
"Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - AMENDS the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's policies, THROUGH PRESS, PUBLICATIONS, RADIO, MOTION PICTURES, THE INTERNET, AND OTHER INFORMATION MEDIA INCLUDING SOCIAL MEDIA, and through information centers and instructors. (Under current* law such authority is restricted to information disseminated abroad, with a limited domestic exception.)
Authorizes the Secretary and the Board to make available IN THE UNITED STATES motion pictures, films, video, audio, and other materials prepared for dissemination abroad** or disseminated abroad pursuant to such Act, the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994, the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, or the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act.
AMENDS the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987 to prohibit funds for the Department of State or the Board from being used to influence public opinion or propagandizing in the United States. (Under current law such provision applies to the United States Information Agency [USIA].)"
*2012
**"Modern" news media like CNN, having a domestic AND international audience, and the international news availability domestically on the lnternet were two of the initial examples cited as justification for it.
Just imagine what else has been permitted since this was signed into law and tucked into the NDAA "Patriot Act". We may never know as it's probably classified.
Well that is the format I have seen it in for at least 50 times in the last several years. So for lack of a better word, “meme”. Political action, presidential directive, regulatory rule, etc etc
Great piece but I think Matt should have stated with a unifying message. After all, left to right the legacy/ “mainstream” media has one mutual love---------- the military industrial complex ------------ where concern for truth takes a backseat to Raytheon profits and easy money laundering of taxpayer dollars via dead people in some other hemisphere.
Here's an interesting quote from Robert Parry who unfortunately is no longer with us, and was written in 2017. "But neocons’ most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left’s disgust with President Trump." It was blatantly clear that many on the so called left during the Trump years are also responsible for what is going on now in their endless attack on Trump using the anti-Russia propaganda pushed by the democrats. Not only was it used to attack Trump and prevent him from getting along with Russia but to raise the fears in this country about Russia and further the divide which makes them more suggestive and vulnerable to the lies they push.
If the media is corporately owned, and their bottom line is money there is no incentive for change. Pushing Trump sex lies, and Russia-gate made it more profitable for both sides, whether your talking about the mainstream media in print, or on TV, and their profits only encouraged more lies. I never expected anything from them since they haven't been a source of real news for many years. However, the left are equally guilty and many if not most lost all sense of objectivity during Trump's presidency. What they did was not only to attack Trump, but they embraced the democrats, and became another source of misinformation. I wonder if the media on every level had done their jobs would we be faced with the possibility of nuclear war? I always thought the anti-Russia rhetoric used to delegitimize Trump was a bridge the democrats used to get us to where we are now in the war in Ukraine, after all isn't it just a continuation of our support which we provided in the 2014 coup that ousted a pro-Russian president?
It's Interesting that Taibbi can challenge those who say the election was stolen, when the democratic party spent four years trying to remove Trump from office, labeling him as illegitimate since Russia installed him in office. I am not saying it was stolen, but the democrats gave many cause to feel it was.
"It's Interesting that Taibbi can challenge those who say the election was stolen, when the democratic party spent four years trying to remove Trump from office, labeling him as illegitimate since Russia installed him in office. I am not saying it was stolen, but the democrats gave many cause to feel it was". BINGO!
Yeah, Matt has a bit of a blind spot re: the 2020 election...after Russiagate, Zuckerbucks, the suppression of Hunter's laptop, etc etc etc, does any honest person think that election was legit? The Powers that Be were not going to allow Trump to be re-elected under any circumstances. Period.
It just makes sense that if the democratic party wanted to remove Thump for four years and repeatedly said he was illegitimate and it was the Russians who elected him into office, as Jimmy Carter said, it's not a stretch to think they wouldn't let him have another win. They impeached him in the house because he wanted dirt on Biden, okay if you believe that, but impeach him? The mainstream media, the left treated him like he was illegitimate, so are they going to let him win when they I believe they have a rendezvous with Russia.
Good point, Fran, but one minor correction: it was not just the Democrats who were not going to allow Trump to be re-elected--it was also done with the indispensable support of establishment Republicans. We now know that they would rather lose elections than see the GOP taken over by the populist wing.
I agree, and I wish they would get rid of McConnell. He's a real career politician, and only wants an acceptable career politician who plays by the rules.
Yes, and the media is supposed to be the impartial watchdog over all political parties and all government behavior. The media should not take sides. A properly functioning media is vital to democracy and should honestly and fairly investigate, report and hold publicly accountable what the government says and does. Perhaps the media as a whole has always been fairly partisan, but its behavior the last 6 years is beyond disgraceful. It has been no better than Soviet Pravda. The media bias towards the Democrats is shameful. There are a great many in both parties who should be exposed for their deceit and wrongdoing. Media bias is apparent in what is NOT reported as well. Hunter Biden's laptop revelations is but one example. I'm disgusted with pretty much all media. Most journalists should be ashamed and embarrassed to be called journalists because they don't do their basic jobs. And yes, democracy IS at risk when the press isn't honest and open. Who else can inform and tell the truth to the public?
They say somewhere back when the media really felt it was there obligation to inform the public of the truth, but when the corporations took over truth was side lined, and money would determine the "truth."
The integration of former CIA directors into news and commentary programs is a stunning departure from anything we've seen before, especially given that they have been instrumental in spreading falsehoods about Trump and denying truths about Biden. Everything that's happened since Trump announced has led many of us to question the ruling class, or deep state, or whatever you want to call it, including the questioning of the 2020 election, which is not "insane," but rather is totally rational given the way the rules were ripped up and rewritten in a way that made the process susceptible to corruption.
“This is not journalism. It’s political entertainment and therefore unreliable.”. This is one of the best things I have ever read re MSM. I have not watched one second of ANY MSM station, read ANY MSM newspaper in over 8 years. It is no longer reliable.
So... how do you know they are unreliable? How can you tell they get things wrong if you don't even watch "one second" of their content? I find that checking in with these sources from time to time allows me to understand and then effectively push against the narratives they promulgate. It also protects me from being captured by bad faith actors who would like to "interpret" or "explain" things for me, even from the "MSM" media. How do you know you are in opposition to their content if you don't even "see" any of it?
I didn’t watch any msm coverage of Covid, and I didn’t read msm coverage much, but I still knew they were spreading a lot of lies. I was looking at World-O-Meter data watching cases in Israel spike in July 2021, right along with their vaccination rate, while my friends who did watch/read msm but weren’t so interested in source data were completely convinced the jabs were 95% effective at preventing infection and that the protection would last “at least a decade, maybe longer.” When boosters came out shortly after that time, they claimed, with zero evidence, it was like “measles shots” that took “more doses” despite the fact the Covid is not measles and the mRNA shots and MMR vaccines use entirely different technology with completely different biological mechanisms that stimulate the immune system in different ways. They didn’t read the Pfizer press release and they weren’t going near the doctor. They watched the evening news and read NYT.
I was in undergrad with all the msm lies, from Fox to WaPo to NYT, about Iraq and the weapons they never had and correlations to Afghanistan that weren’t based in reality. People around me just parroted what they herd on the evening news or read in the paper with zero intellectual curiosity. It’s hard to make conclusive statements without actually watching/ readingthe msm, but as some point replication of outcomes negates the need to keep actually paying attention directly to the msm. At this point one only has to listen to the stuff that comes out of the mouths of the uncritical people who still do.
As a retired scientist who spent too much time talking to colleagues about Covid from the start of the pandemic, I was stunned at the poor Covid response of the US. The mRNA vaccines may have saved vulnerable Covid-naive Elderly and Seriously Ill early on, but overall they have been unmitigated disaster and the CDC, FDA and NIAID have lost much credibility. While it is difficult to interpret all of what happened during the course of Covid (one of my friends claims Omicron is the Jesus virus, as it saved mankind), the association of Covid deaths with universal Covid vaccine campaigns has been noted by many. You mentioned Israel, small countries like the Seychelles and Gibraltar were among the earliest and heaviest vaccinated countries, and had the highest death rates even with "protection". Singapore had almost no Covid deaths until it committed to the universal vaccine campaign despite high numbers of cases in an isolated construction population (they noted that Elderly and Seriously Ill were the ones who died, vaccinated or unvaccinated; unlike the US who claimed Covid was a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated, claiming a 2000-fold protection by the vaccines, Singapore saw a weekly 5- to-10-fold protection and their unvaccinated were largely for medical reasons.) Iceland, who was hailed as a great success for their universal Covid campaign, went from a cumulative 35 Covid deaths immediately after their vaxxes to 219 today. Their chief epidemiologist went from Hero to a misinformation spreader by pointing out that infection-induced immunity (natural immunity) is the only way out of the pandemic: riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/herd-immunity-must-be-achieved-by-transmission-of-the-virus-says-icelands-epidemiologist/ Of course you can cherry-pick the data (the 10,000+ CDC employees are masters!) or just dismiss the evidence (Africa's much better Covid death rate in unvaccinated countries has even been dismissed as "the Africans cannot count". ) The bottom-line is that the first year (pre-vaccine) brought a LOT of natural immunity with each successive wave; this more than anything defeated Covid in many places (arguably NYC and the NorthEastern states with heavy infections and death rates early on, benefitted ).
What we really needed was public debates and discussions from ALL scientists in the field, not the handful of AIDS experts making bad decisions and censoring of all disagreement. That is the way science works (or should work: "Science advances one death at a time" as the older, pig-headed scientists die off). Instead the US has by far the highest number of Covid deaths (Chris Hedges cites the US' 4% of the global population having 20-25% of the Covid deaths. Brazil is 2nd at <700,000 deaths). The US is 16th worse in Covid death rate (3302 per million) of over 200 countries (suspicious minds point out that 13 of the worst below us are near Ukraine-- only 39% vaccinated, but a much lower death rate than most of Eastern Europe-- and its US bioweapons labs).
From a long-term perspective, the CDC's loss of credibility in the eyes of fair-minded people will be the most serious outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic. CDC was revealed to be highly influenced by political actors, to be inept at supporting rapid virus detection in local communities, and to be staffed with an astonishing number of high-paid bureaucrats. Public health threats will continue to emerge in the decades ahead, and our nation is now left without a trusted organization to lead our response. Such a sad and severe fall for what had been one of the most highly respected and nimble agencies in our government.
I can't claim originality! There is a bumper sticker (& other paraphenalia) with it available on Amazon, which I have on my car. I used it because, as Matt repeatedly demonstrates through his writing, it is highly reflective of our time.
Hopefully the Regulatory Authorities will be re-organized; regulatory capture seems to have set in. I'm probably most disappointed in the FDA. My impression used to be that they were pain-stakingly strict but fair. Drs. Marion Gruber and Philip Krause did the right thing by retiring, they clearly were not affecting decisions on the mRNA vaccines (all that the US uses now).
Meta-analysis of the EUA clinical trial data (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489, Benn et al, Table 1) indicated that in 37000+ subjects in the mRNA vaccinated groups there were 2 Covid deaths and 29 non-Covid deaths; in the placebo groups there were 5 Covid deaths and 25 non-Covid deaths. While there were no statistically significant differences in Covid deaths (2.5-fold "protection") in mRNA vaxxed groups, nor in placebo protection from overall deaths, the overarching result is that the mRNA vaccines DO NOT SIGNIFICANTLY PROTECT against death, the only important endpoint. The EUA approval seems to be based entirely on statistically significant protection against symptomatic Covid (symptomatic Covid was the same endpoint that Gazit et al, 2021 used on a huge Israeli national database meta-analysis with matched populations to show that infection immunity/ natural immunity was 27-fold more protective than the Pfizer jabs). Of course, the EUA clinical trials were the best (only?) Golden Standard double-blinded placebo-controlled studies for the mRNA vaccines, designed (poorly I would submit) by Pfizer and Moderna, but with high numbers of subjects for statistical analysis. Despite showing no protection from death, the mRNA vaccines were approved anyway, and politicians and physicians kept shouting that the mRNAs vaccines might not stop Covid infection nor spread, but they stopped death. The Golden Standard clinical trials showed no effect on deaths. If you argue they blocked symptomatic Covid so MUST lower Covid death, you would also have to argue that natural immunity blocked 27-fold more Covid death. The refusal to acknowledge the science-- from China initially, from Italy and the UK, from Sweden and Iceland, from Africa, from the Far East, from Israel, Qatar, and studies throughout the world-- instead blocking all dissent and even censuring the internet for valid scientific concerns and discussions, is largely why the US has over 1.1 million Covid deaths.
But the important thing is that a lot of people made a lot of money off the pandemic.
It is highly unlikely that CDC, FDA or any gov't organization will be thrown out and rebuilt. The collapse of confidence these organizations ushered onto themselves is remarkable. Complete incompetence.
They once had credibility, but CDC had been dysfunctional for years. I knew many in medical innovation community who had called for it to be privatized because of bloat and dysfunction long before Covid.
You do realize that every year flu vaccination rates rise sharply at precisely the same time that cases of the flu increase nationally?
This is part of the problem with people having no reliable sources and doing their own “research”. Unless they’re experts at interpreting the data, which they usually aren’t, they draw all sorts of erroneous conclusions.
Well, technically I am one of those "experts", but I don't trust them and neither should you. Fauci, Birx, and Redfield were all AIDS experts, hardly interchangeable with a respiratory coronavirus. They NEEDED input from others, but refused discussion. Scientists are hardly affected by crazed views from non-scientists, but often there are insights which we miss or don't appreciate. An open forum for discussion would have saved many Covid victims' lives. I know several modelers and they and I believe natural immunity has been much more important at saving lives than the mRNA Covid vaccines (admittedly a technological marvel, which we will see more, hopefully in cancer, not mild diseases at first).
As to flu, my family is vaccinated and all have the flu (I skipped it this year, but have been flu vaccinated probably the previous ten years, so likely have cellular cross-immunity if not high antibody titers). It's always a trade off, flu kills vulnerable Elderly and the very young, but for most it is an inconvenience, but infection provides stronger future immunity. A pneumonia vaccine is probably more useful for the Elderly as that opportunistically often follows debilitating flu infection. Most virologists know you never get vaccinated during a flu or other epidemic, you get vaccinated a month before. The "experts" also frequently get the variant wrong; at least that is their field, they interact, and follow flu variants in the Southern hemisphere to guess at what's likely coming. Covid "experts" in the West ignored the rest of the World.
I agree with you that many of the policies advocated by the “establishment” left with regard to the pandemic were misguided, although I think a good deal of this had to do more with misunderstanding the social and psychological effects of policies like prolonged lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates, i.e., as opposed to misinterpretation of basic science. In the end, I still happen to think the left was far more correct than the right about the eventual scope of the Covid pandemic as well as the efficacy of vaccines and therapeutics in bringing it to an end.
But sticking with Matt’s apparent thesis here, i.e., that the MSM should be reflexively mistrusted pretty much across the board, I personally think he’s going a bit far. Seems to me the MSM DOES in fact report plenty of things that are verifiably factual and true - examples might include 1) reporting that Russia invaded Ukraine last February, 2) a hurricane severely pummeled Florida a month or so ago, 3) hospital ER’s were clogged with Covid cases back in the spring of 2020, 4) Donald Trump gave a speech on 1/6/2021 claiming he lost the election due to fraud and urging Mike Pence to refuse to certify it, and 5) documents that Trump removed from the White House were recently taken from Mar-el-Lago by federal agents.
Yes, there most definitely is also an MSM “narrative” associated with all of these reports which shouldn’t be there - 1) Putin had no actual basis for feeling threatened by the West, 2) hurricane destruction nowadays needs to be seen as due to climate change, 3) Trump’s mismanagement was clearly the main reason for the Covid surge, 4) Trump was also clearly trying to illegitimately overturn a fair election result when he gave that speech, and 5) Trump removed top-secret documents illegally.
But I guess in the absence of other good, comprehensive sources of information I’m personally not sure it’s the best course to advise people to reflexively disbelieve EVERYthing the MSM reports in favor of doing their own “research”. Doing so seems in my experience to have the psychological effect of turning people so completely away from the MSM that they start instead to confuse correctly reported facts with what’s simply subjective narrative coming at them from the other side of the ideologic divide.
Here are some examples of what I see as widely held but misguided contrarian beliefs that seem to flow from this recommendation to non-selectively turn away from the MSM altogether - assertions along the lines of 1) Covid wasn’t really a particularly serious issue and 96% of the reported deaths were in fact deliberately misreported and due to something else, 2) Covid vaccines not only don’t protect against infection or hospitalization but in fact don’t protect at all and are causing a hidden but massive spike in unreported deaths due to side effects, 3) global temperatures AREN’T actually rising, sea levels aren’t rising either, and glaciers and polar ice sheets aren’t receding because the whole “climate change thing” is just a hoax, 4) the Newtown gun massacre was either staged or never happened, 5) the Bucha massacre was actually a false flag operation perpetrated by the Ukrainian rather than Russian side, 6) Donald Trump actually won MORE popular votes in both presidential elections than either of his opponents because Democrats illegally manufactured millions of votes, 7) the J6 riot was actually a peaceful protest with no preconceived intent on the part of any of the protesters to interfere with certification of the recent election, and 8) a plain majority of American voters actually agree with Trump that the 2020 presidential was stolen.
I obviously don’t think any of these are correct and I think that it’s just as harmful to our civic life to have so many people invested in them as to have so many others equally invested in the MSM’s biased narratives.
I guess my take is that I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful to tell people not to trust the MSM unless one can actually simultaneously provide them with access to a truly more reliable global source of information, which I’m not sensing is being provided by the right wing media in any form. I suppose the implication might be that Matt and Substack writers like him ARE the more reliable source, and I do think that’s substantially albeit not invariably true given that many of them also seem to cater to particular subsets of readers, but another flaw here might be that it’s not really feasible for a single individual to comprehensively and accurately report on the many, many different topics that people rely on to give them an accurate picture of the world. This means that people have to access multiple different sources and individually assess their reliability, which may become an impossible task in the day-to-day world.
I don’t know, maybe the answer is to advocate for people to get their information from as many sources as possible, not necessarily excluding the MSM, but learn to develop more sensitive antennae to distinguish what’s “narrative” from what are simple factual reporting. In any event, I don’t think there’s an easy fix for this problem.
We all see MSM news. It dominates everything. You don't have to specifically read it to not see it. It permeates out into the realm for all to digest. It's crap, and the people writing it know it. I mean, all you need to know about the world today is that the EU and Apple are going to dump Twitter because they no longer have direct lines into the company to control what is said.
How much more do you need to know that we are being sold crap on a puke Milkshake.
It is hard to escape what is in the Main State Media (MSM) since the whole society bathes in its narratives. Almost any information in the MSM is also reported in the non-MSM. Either with an opposed bias or an analysis of the MSM.
I spend 5 minutes every morning going to Dutch MSM headlines to be aware of anything urgent. Most headlines can be dismissed out of hand since they tell me that female X did Y for the first time, why female group Z are victims, and how they feel the need to womansplain W to me (in a video). The few articles that are interesting I tend to read. Invariably they quote a spokewoman, even if the topic's field is highly dominated by males. Then the few articles about current events are often a tad narcist, emotional and Manichean; bypassing rationality and argumentation, putting a high contrast black and white filter on problems that are invariably some shade of grey.
Sometimes I slip back to the NYT because it use to have some wonderful specials. However, in the last few years they resemble Scientific American in that somehow they deem it necessary to be unbelievable sexist and racist (in the old fashioned meaning) even if the topic does not warrant its inclusion or discussion.
If find that in talks with MSM readers they tend to be quite ignorant of the facts on the ground. Ask them how much wall T. built and they often think ~5 miles (it was 452 miles). Rarely are they aware of Project Warpspeed's achievements, his prison reform, his effective departmental deregulation rules, the content of the Abraham accords, Title IX reform, foreign policy, while they are still convinced T. was a Russian spy and peed on the bed in Moscow. Worse, any attempt to bring up some of the achievements of T.'s administration are almost invariably blocked by a hysteric reaction about T.'s bad character. Something which I agree on. However, it is still interesting to know how this man was so effective for the people that elected him while Biden seems to be a much nicer grandpa but stumbles in a lot of places: economy, inflation, Afghanistan, Ukraine, racism, sexism, etc.
I think I know the MSM's narrative but the MSM readers tend to be surprisingly oblivious of any events outside their Truman island.
Not wrong in the least, but as I stated above I find it helpful to confirm my biases periodically. This at least makes me conversant with friends who still consume MSM and allows me to refute their points with the credibility earned by witnessing and understanding the message and methods the MSM employs. It is very effective for me. By the way, I surmise my biases are very similar to yours!
Interesting. I loved that line also, though might have changed "political entertainment" to "political advocacy." (In part because I consider advocacy masquerading as journalism to be anything but entertaining.)
I can relate to this...but, it is no longer possible to avoid political infotainment. It's on tee shirts, coffee cups or worse yet, "trending" on Twitter. Even the Thanksgiving get-togethers had snippets of CNBC contamination. I really want to see what Matt's opponents have up their sleeves.!
The MSM had a left-wing bias when I grew up in the 80s, but the bias appeared to be genuine, reflective of the actual politics of college educated east coast urbanites with no substantive business experience. The contrast today is stark. Though I'm sure he is actually politically left, does anyone think Chris Hayes believes half the things he promotes? If you want a real chuckle, follow Dan Rather on Twitter. It's really quite extraordinary.
The irony is that the only really reliable mainstream (for a given definition of mainstream) print media today is the WSJ. After all the hysteria over Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the WSJ, it's the only national US newspaper that doesn't daily embarrass itself.
The WSJ is the old NY Times lite. It costs a fortune, as always, and its news stories are suspiciously close to the narratives of the Times and the WaPo. Their article on the Fetterman/Oz debate hid Fetterman's obvious impairment. But the WSJ lets you contact the authors of news stories by providing their email addresses at the end of stories. I emailed one author, expressing my dismay, and he responded, stating that he would share my views of the article with his co-author and editor. Not completely satisfactory, but something. Maybe if more readers communicate directly with WSJ reporters, news coverage would improve.
Reader comments to the article, thankfully, were mainly along the lines of "AYFKM?"
Unfortunately, seeing more and more of The Narrative creeping into the WSJ news articles. As you noted, it's likely due to the social class that journalists belong to.
I don't think I agree with your characterization of the article. The article is about the impact on various charities of the FTX insolvency, rather than the insolvency, but there were a lot of WSJ stories about the insolvency, this just wasn't one of them. I disagree that "this poor young man" is the theme of this article, though. Your claim is hard to square with lines such as:
"...revelations that he mixed FTX’s money with that of its customers...";
"...declared lofty philanthropic goals..." (which I thought was sort of a slap);
"Run by self-described idealists ..."
"...self-described philosopher-executives running the organizations have resigned..."
"...the company’s lawyers said this week that a “substantial amount” of assets were missing and possibly stolen."
"Mr. Bankman-Fried often claimed philanthropy was his primary motivation..."
"Mr. MacAskill distanced himself from FTX as it was crumbling. In a string of tweets, he accused Mr. Bankman-Fried of personal betrayal..."
The article concluded by quoting SBF about his dedication to philanthropy as "this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths [sic.] and so everyone likes us."
I mean...I'm not a PR professional, but - I can't stress this enough - this is not great press.
I'm curious, which lines from this article do you think are narrative-peddling?
I think this is an example of how two people can read the same thing and have completely opposite takes. Perhaps my antipathy for FTX's blatant political buying, and the likelihood that this little shit is going to get away with it, caused me to miss the "shade" (I believe the kids call it) thrown at Bankman-Fried.
I read this as a more straightforward piece on the charities impacted (by accepting looted funds, of course) with a quick discussion of "effective altruism," until we got to the bottom paragraph about "the dumb game we woke westerners play." That's the one line that explicitly said - to me, at least - that hey, this was more than just an unfortunate collapse of a risky business model.
Add the fact that SBF was giving serious cash to ProPublica, Vox, etc., and yes, I am profoundly suspicious of media reporting and bias - all the fish in this industry come from the same pond. Frankly, far better coverage was provided, and is still being provided, by various crypto and finance malcontents on Twitter.
But now that you pulled quotes and reframed them, yes, I can see that there was barbed commentary in the piece. I guess I'd just prefer a scimitar to a barb.
Regional newspapers were, in the '50s and '60s, reliable and read -- both editions, am and pm. The Chicago Daily New, The Chicago Tribune kept us up-to-date on the goings on in the city council and bidding wars on the corrupt Chicago infrastructure. Yes, there were really "muckrakers" that were respected and revered by Editorial Staff and circulation alike. Broadcast media -- local TV (WGN) and radio were also grassroots oriented. Bear in mind, then the revenue came from subscribers. Now, it's all international consortiums of businesses and investors.
When I was in high school in the 1960s, we lived near Sacramento in CA. At that time there were two newspapers...one conservative leaning and the other liberal leaning. One came out in the morning, the other in the afternoon. My parents always subscribed to both and I grew up reading both. It was always interesting to see the different ways topics were presented, especially in the editorial sections, but at that time, the two points of view weren't as radically different as they are now. And they both reported on all the subjects of the day, it wasn't selective like it is now.
And we, the readers, would "trust" that the varied points of view would give us a kind of consensus or enhanced vision of daily news. It was a very revealing and excellent debate.
Canada's media is arguably even more biased. In addition to the factors you mentioned (which are very much in play up here), our entire media industry is hemorrhaging so much money that various news organizations receive an annual bailout from the federal government. When the Liberal Party is in power, these annual bailouts tend to leave more room for bonuses, so the media has a glaring conflict of interest that has turned them into a PR department for the Liberal Party of Canada.
They demonize even milquetoast centrists like Erin O'Toole as "far right fascists" because they know where their bread gets buttered and they dread the prospect of Conservatives gaining control of the bailout purse strings.
Interesting. Canada seems to be becoming a dystopian hellscape with remarkable speed and this dynamic may explain a little bit of that. Money - the root of, if not all, certainly 'most' evil.
Yeah there are only a handful of outlets that will criticize the Dear Leader, and of course reading any of them gets you placed squarely in the "basket of deplorables".
Last I heard Quebec was still part of Canada. My local press is fantastic. Here in rural Quebec a Free Press is fundamental to democracy and La Tribune is my first read in the morning.
The Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star are colonial outposts of America's oligarchs.
I has always been thus from the days of town criers.
Toronto is home to John Ralston Saul the Supreme authority on press freedom and its evolution.
Last I heard you think Trudeau and Freeland are demigods anointed to rule Canada with divine benevolence, so naturally you'd love media that sings their praises from dawn to dusk, day in and day out.
I've met evangelical Christians who worship Jesus less than you worship Trudeau.
I don't worship anybody or anything. I believe Trudeau and Freeland are doing to the best of their abilities what will most benefit Canadians. I believe them to be sincere in their beliefs which are often very different from my beliefs.
I think you are limited in your understandings from living in your particular echo chamber. Politics is the art of getting along without violence.
I hate stupid and there is just so much I can handle without getting angry.
You speak Newspeak. Words mean only what you prefer them to mean. You are the conflict. You are ignorant and don't even know that you are ignorant.
If I might misquote:
You attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity.
I discovered myself in Alberta. I was an epiphany. The people tried to do what they believed was good but they had little understanding of cause and effect.
I worked in churches and people believed in Noah.
I am a Jew and I know myth and legend when I see it. I know literature when I see it. I know my bible it is brilliant literature and there isn't a scintilla of history.
Let us start with that fundamental truth.
In Quebec we were able to put that into law.
Darwin is the Messiah on who we are and how we got here.
Try doing that in "English" speaking or Spanish speaking North America.
The theory of evolution through natural selection is a century and half old and today is accepted science. Science is always open to a revolution in thinking. Religion demands we believe in magic.
Hi Moe, I notice your reference to Darwin. I also think the evolutionary perspective is the most explanatory. So, I have a question for you (admittedly off-topic for this particular post).
When Bari Weiss interviewed Netanyahu she asked, “Do you believe that the Jewish people are chosen?” He replied, “Yes. In the sense that we have brought to the world the idea of morality.”
My initial reaction was that his view is simply ignorant of the human condition. Humans have evolved a repertoire of moral sentiments that are adaptive for group scale cooperation--- long before Abraham was around.
But OTOH, even if all of our social dispositions and capacities are evolutionarily based, the particulars of social evolution will exhibit some amount of path dependency. In other words, what do you make of the idea that Judaism changed the “morality” landscape of human social evolution?
Here we go again. Here in Quebec the media is part of our secular humanist liberal democracy. The Montreal Gazette represents a small but vocal ethnic community. Ourmedia is as close to being fully democratic under our economic system.
I failed to detect any political or social bias during our six weeks of political campaigning.
Our last two elections expressed Quebecer's satisfaction with both Ottawa and Quebec City.
I agree with John Ralston Saul. Cynicism is democracy's greatest threat.
I subscribe to La Tribune because I trust them. I subscribe to the Washington Post, New York Times, Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star because I know there slants.
You want a media you can trust you must pay the piper.
The level of satisfaction you see with Ottawa and Quebec City is unprecedented because the media are bias toadies parroting government talking points. They have been bought. We’ve seen news organizations in Quebec loosing government support because they criticized the government. People naively believe the msm is still trustworthy. I hope most wake up soon. Democracy and freedom are at stake.
I am 74 years old. The people are satisfied with the government because they are healthy wealthy and secure. I watched Quebec go from a theocratic plutocracy to a liberal democracy. I watched the University of Quebec turn peasants into doctors, lawyers, engineers and business executives. I remember when New York 21 was rich and we were poor.
I remember Vermont before Bernie Sanders and we called it Mississippi North.
I remember the Montreal ghetto in which I grew up.
We got problems but our grandchildren know the difference between Darwin and the myths, legends and literature of my ancestors.
I remember when people like me weren't welcome in either Catholic or Protestant Quebec and I feel welcome and honoured in a place I wasn't to live in 50 years ago..
I don't like France or England they both hated people who didn't conform to whatever pure laine means in a species that killed off all the competition.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Russians, the English, the Americans, the Holy Romans are not friends of liberal democracy.
Bill21 is my kind of legislation.
I remember my first job and the people in charge were always in charge and most couldn't adapt to technological change.
Most people see only a flat world when we can simulate black holes in space.
Give me a break. I lived in Canada's bible belt. My wife was born in Nashville.
Noah in the bible was the town drunk that is why he wasn't evil.
We are products of natural selection just like my garden snails.
My MLA and MP both respond to my demands and my newspaper makes them pay attention. That is democracy. You can't always get what you want and maybe that is why Quebec believes democracy is worth the travails of compromise.
The gods can take care of themselves . Quebec is taking care of citizens and Je me souviens.
I was born during the padlock laws and my father understood his place in Quebec's theocracy.
I read your blog. I read your opinions. I thought I offered clear and informed opposition and you banned me for a century.,
I like informed debate. I was brought up to question.
I think I know what it means to be Christian and I don't believe you are anything but a Roman but I am old and have been a stranger in strange lands all my life.
I know what people believe. They believe the things that make it easier to survive their moral and ethical and physical realities.
I am a Deist, I reject all religion whether is be theological, economic, social, or political
If you want to talk Christianity lets talk about Jesus not Rome.
I understand the poetry and the humanity. My God is the God of the universe not the Temple.
I am slow, so slow that at 74 I have more to learn about the world now than when I was 60, 50, 40, or thirty.
I do not understand your public personna. I have only questions to ask. I do not understand why you insist on knowing the answers we were to discover for ourselves.
The bible says we became human when we ate the forbidden fruit.
Yes, I do talk to Jesus. He is part of me because I am a part of the Universe.
I know Jesus believes in Darwin.
I know the difference between the moment and the infinite. I studied First Centuru Judaism and the Roots of Christianity with a a Rabbinical zealot.
I believe I understand what Jesus said but I also understand he could neither read nor write because he was a simple peasant not chosen to lead by divine providence.
David was anointed by the High Priest, Jesus was pissed upon by the chosen of God.
Real Christians understand being pissed upon. America's Evangelicals are pissers who like pissing on people they are not Christians.
I suppose it’s still preferable to corporate interests controlling our media. Don’t you agree - would you really want Telus or RBC or Suncor deciding? Some billionaire? At least the governments can change and flex things in different directions with some supposed citizen oversight and mandate.
I do like having a true nationwide news service that better unites us. Perhaps it draws more bleeding hearts and leftists - but we are a more socialist democratic kind of nation than where I used to live below the 49th.
Was it all that great that our last Federal Conservative government muzzled any federal employee - not speaking through the Harper filter was verboten. So transparency suffered ...while the spending was better kept in check. I think it’s probably a better balance and chance that we have here with news in Canada. With different governments,by the people, morphing our national broadcaster - but not destroying it!
However! - I still see on the world stage our broadcaster spews out the company line/propaganda of our allies. Case in point: Ukraine. More arms/more soldiers/we are always in the side of freedom fighters. All the parties push this superficial crap. Afghanistan, for example, cost us way way more than any extra budget for the CBC ever could. You could run the broadcaster for 200 years with the money we poured down the toilet winning the hearts and minds of Afghanis. ugh.
Oh yeah - the spending thing is going to be a big big problem. My poor grandkids ( as yet, not born). But a democratic government ( with campaign finance laws in place!!!! Yay) controlling the national broadcaster is still the best option. Incremental and piecemeal changes - just like Popper argues in the Open Society. It’s the least worst system. I hope you are joking about having an oil patch business run the news. Suncor (or any corporation or monarchy or dictator) would be what he calls an enemy of the open society. The argument is sound. We can hopefully always get rid of our government peacefully in our system.
"We can hopefully always get rid of our government peacefully in our system."
Depends how many people buy into the CBC message that this government must stay in power eternally or else Canada will be overrun by fascism. I don't think Popper was a big fan of Pravda or other state-controlled media, nor did he consider Pravda a component of an open society. CBC is basically Liberal Pravda at this point.
You have no understanding of economics. I met my wife when she was doing her doctorate at University of Calgary. I worked for a conservative MLA. I studied the Rainy-day fund or should I say rainy day fun. They stole more money than Exxon Mobil and BP combined.
I understand greed but give me a break.
Alberta makes Ottawa's den thieves look like Catholic monks.
Calvin is Alberta's middle name.
Alberta's chosen are the wealthy and powerful and justice is for suckers.
I used to bum coigarette with Ralph, he wasa the Biblical Noah. He was the town drunk but basically he was just RALPH a great and loyal friend and a Useful Idiot.
I like Lethbridge but your current Premier is not exactly Albert Einstein or the Rock of Gibraltar.
I am disheartened by any media that acts like courtiers to everything the government and military spews. Especially about wars. All the propaganda- even, dare I say, about WWI and WWII and how completely fabulous and noble we all were winning those. Politicians and war mongers/profiteers will lie. I just expect the media to know this and not push the propaganda without any question.
So I write my MP and I vote trying to get people in there with some independence. I write my media. I fight to stay open-minded. I’m scared that so many people are so easily convinced by shallow “news”.
And, still, it’s a decent place we live. We can disagree and argue and I can accept my person doesn’t win some elections. We keep tweaking -without violence - and hope the media can keep a check on power rather than be in bed with it.
Nothing against what you've accomplished here, Matt, but we now have a situation in which telling extremely basic, undeniable truths—as you have here—is not only rare but controversial, in a profession that equally literally and farcically claims the truth as its bottom line.
I hope Gladwell and Goldberg leave the exchange deeply ashamed of themselves and their employers, but I'm guessing they won't.
Because it will get large, become institutional and people will start hating on it and moving elsewhere. De-institutionalizing is the new watchword-out with the old, in with the new.
Goldberg is even worse - she once wrote an article thanking Randi Weingarten for all her work fighting *against* school closures. How's that for revisionist history?
I love ya, Matt, but the 2020 election was stolen; 2022 was even worse in the same counties. Ignoring the proof is the same sin committed by your opponents tonight.
Agreed but I'm forced to respect the nuance of the 2022 falsity. The outcome is just barely plausible given the state of the economy etc. It was a carefully calibrated balancing act with a few specific critical wins like PA and AZ. Final result is the most They could get away with.
The Regime is really upping their election manipulation game. Watch the bellwether counties in 2024, They forgot to fix them in 2020.
And let's not forget every county critical to win had the, uh, er, "unpredictable" problems counting votes in less than a week. And, er, the "feature" where each one yielded a come-from-behind victory of just enough votes all at the very end, 3+ days after the election DAY.
How many coincidences before coincidence is impossible?
We can no longer make assumptions about how elections will swing based on the economy. I mean does anyone believe a majority of voters chose to reward the current policies that have increased our taxes 30% via inflation and the admin’s threat of global nuclear annihilation?
It is all about ballot harvesting now. When dems can harvest the ballots personally or via mail of tens of thousands of uninterested and uninformed people on government welfare in the precincts they know they must win then Republicans will never win again. Both parties agreed mail in voting was susceptible to massive fraud just a short time ago. Covid gave the Dems the excuse to roll it out nationwide.
Do an internet search for US bellwether counties. They are supposedly based on past elections over decades counties whose choice for president mirrored the winning candidate. Now with ballot harvesting and mass mail in voting bellwether counties are a thing of the past.
The reason it was brought up is because all but one bellwether country went for Trump in 2020 which, absent harvesting and mail in ballots is statistically impossible, and we all know how that ended up.
Agreed, I encourage everyone to see the spreadsheet that shows how incongruous the 2020 election was. I'd post the spreadsheet but I cannot. Google it even if that puts you on heightened surveillance.
It is not a "thing of the past". It is an undeniable historical record.
IMO the current push we see everywhere suggesting "ballot harvesting made the difference" is yet more psyop bullshit. This is meant to divert R effort and money to fruitless ends. Encouraging you to spend your time and money on a massive grassroots goose chase.
The cheat is in the counting and the Dominion machines which can be controlled remotely. They simply add the votes needed to win. Thus massive 2020 voter turnout not seen since women got the right to vote.
Yes I think R efforts to harvest ballots 2024 would help. But unless the presidential polls are as wrong as 2016 the thumb on the scale from the Regime will win.
I don’t know if the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen. What I do know is that if they were and if there was a smoking gun proving that they were, half the country would never hear about it.
Exactly. The federal SCOTUS ruled the PA law the PA SOS changed for mail in ballots was illegally changed. The MI and WI courts have ruled those states changed their election laws illegally as well. I don’t know how much evidence one needs but there is plenty out there to see.
That election laws were changed, "illegally" or not, is not evidence of fraud. Only fraud is evidence of fraud, and none has been any proven thus far. When Republican election supervisors in Republican states say the elections were clean, and the Cyber Ninjas hired *specifically* by the AZ GOP to "prove" fraud came up emptyhanded . . .
"2020 was stolen!!" from Trump fans is as tiresome as "2016 was stolen!!" from Hillary backers. Nothing was stolen, we all need to get on with our lives and make sure 2024 voting is fair and square.
The "irregularities" are almost too many to count. The case of Pennsylvania is a real eyebrow-raiser. Joe Torsella, the Democratic secretary of state, widely considered a 2022 gubernatorial candidate, lost to a Republican challenger by nearly 80,000 votes. It was the first time since 1994 that a Republican beat an incumbent Democratic statewide officeholder and capped a brutal election cycle for Pennsylvania Democrats in down-ballot races. A Republican won the state auditor’s race by 200,000 votes. And the Democratic minority leader of the Pennsylvania state senate, a thirty-year incumbent, lost to a Republican. So, quite the "Red wave" in the state of Pennsylvania, but Biden still managed to win by 80,000 votes. It was also very sketchy that on election night itself, in key swing states where Trump held large leads — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan — election officials shut down and stopped counting votes. When the lights came back on the next morning, Biden was in front in all.
no ssdd. they have all been manipulated, for decades. trump himself knows this, which why he did absolutely ZERO about when he was in office. he knew it was over, so hes milking suckers like you hard for every penny and emotion possible. hes a vampire
that jackass served the swamp just as hard as any other fool
Correction: "Actually the 2000 election was ALMOST stolen." The Democratic Party media called Florida for Gore before the polls had closed in the most Republican part of the state. The media people didn't know that Florida is in two time zones! They called the state after the polls closed in the EST but before they closed in the CST part (Pensacola, etc.). Estimates are that at least 5000 Bush voters left the line before voting after hearing that their candidate had lost.
Excuse me, but most cars had radios, and there were lots of small portable radios that people carried. And the word quickly spread in the lines of people still waiting to vote.
You are wrong. The news was broadcast 45 minutes after the polls closed in the Eastern Time Zone, but 15 minutes before the polls closed in the Central Time Zone. And all of the many news stations were reporting on the election results continuously.
You’re very brave, Matt, and I admire you for it. You run the risk of being labeled a right wing nut job now, when you could easily have looked the other way and become a superstar. I’m especially grateful to you and Walter Kirn for your Friday show. I’m looking forward to it this week. Good luck tonight.
This belief is why activists work so hard to shift the Overton window. If you push the boundaries far enough, the "extreme" becomes "normal" and vice versa.
That's the danger when you allow mainstream thought to shape your opinions.
I'm genuinely curious to see how any intelligent person could claim with a straight face that the MSM hasn't morphed into a cross between Pravda and the KGB, or that the NYT etc isn't the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party and the "L'Osservatore Romano" for the Social Justice religion.
This IS NOT entertainment. And stop with that "everybody does it" bullshit. The shit we are being provided by said MSM is part of a larger conspiracy to divide us and destroy not only Western Civilization, but even the basic elements of what constitutes a healthy family, heck, a healthy individual. Women can hav dicks, men can get pregnant, paedophilia is a just another preference, all of humanity's triumphs and achievements squeezed through the fecund sphincter of "racism." Free speech and freedom bad, censorship and ostracization of "unbelievers" good.
The movie's even better. Great sound and graphics! On our screens now.
Same script. Different cast, like the new "Tarzan Forever!" (title in paraphrase). They still have CIA Agent Friendly (Martin Freeman, who usually plays agreeable roles) though I'm still not sure why his character is in the movie, and after watching Freeman interviewed I'm not sure he is either. In the first movie, when he is introduced, my immediate first thought was Lumumba.
"The shit we are being provided by said MSM is part of a larger conspiracy to divide us and destroy not only Western Civilization, but even the basic elements of what constitutes a healthy family, heck, a healthy individual."
This is certainly the effect, but rather than conspiracy I think it reflects the fact that the staff are college graduates, or at least have had some college, which means they have likely contracted the social disease of neo-Marxism, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
Their perverse assumptions about what is right and good are reflected in their advocacy of the social pathologies you list here. It makes the progressive corporate media the footsoldiers of the intelligentsia, tearing society apart, keeping us at each others' throats, while lifetime bureaucrats in DC play their power games to god knows what end . . . evidently some sort of global totalitarian order.
I hate to agree, but you maybe on to something. A recent example, I have subscribed to the National Hockey League broadcasts for over a decade. I have been a hockey fan for fifty years. I know the audience who enjoy hockey, I've seen them in the stands and on broadcasts forever.
Last year a new commercial started to pop up during a game, not one or twice but I'm guessing ten times during one game. The commercial shows a young Hispanic man drinking Jägermeister while in a party scene. The young man has lots of ink, including facial tattoo's which maybe popular in some circles, but to me it seemed to be missing the target audience. I've seen lots of hockey fans but don't recall any with facial ink. I struck it up as a business decision. Possibly Jägermeister purchased lots of airtime and ESPN+ had to fill them in somewhere. Since I'm old and grew up before ink became popular, seeing someone with facial ink was a little different. But after the season I had seen that commercial over one hundred times and facial ink became more normal.
As this years NHL season got close I thought, "well at least I won't have to see that commercial again" (I say the same thing about any ad I seen too many times) as I renewed my NHL subscription. Well, I was somewhat correct. That commercial has been replaced by a brand new Jägermeister ad featuring the same young man. Looks like he had some additional facial work done in the offseason adding additional facial ink. Good news is they found another sponsor to advertise. The new sponsor is touting the benefits of a drug which helps to stop the transmission of HIV. The ad shows numerous couples engaged to fun times with smiles and joy, frolicking and dancing around. They appear to be gender fluid.
I have watched games this year where these were the only commercials aired for the entire broadcast. These ad's being pushed to a Hockey audience seems misguided and a poor value for the sponsors. But repeated watching of this content can change perceptions I imagine.
I use Hulu for my TV source. If I want the best features available, like a DVR and "No Commercials" I must sign as a Disney Plus client, not other options available per Hulu. I'm showing up as a Disney Plus subscriber even though I never view or in any way desire Disney content.
There are anti western cultural psy-ops being run against us all over the media. It is an everywhere all at once campaign and will devastate our societies. They call it “progress” just to demoralize and humiliate us harder.
Let me throw this your way - somewhat taken from Chomsky: the fact that you have sat so many hours watching the NHL itself is also a great way for the powers that be to keep you distracted and content. While we support the wars let’s keep the masses focused on Lord Stanley. Or the NFL or whatever. But the really important issues that could get rather sticky and embarrassing if the masses focused on them instead?....can’t have that. More Jager and “controversy” about someone showing a nipple at halftime!!!!
Good thing I been aware of the powers of which you refer to and refuse to buy into their narratives. I've never considered myself to be one of the masses. I have never supported any war, all of which we started, in my lifetime. I'm not so sure many of today's masses possess the ability to focus and accurately decipher current issues. I also believe that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. The best part is watching these raw, young kids grow into professionals. Their dedication to becoming as good as they can be and willingness to walk through walls for their teammates. The time, money and dedication sacrificed by their parents to get them to the pro level is worthy of praise and the pride and joy those parents feel when their child finally "makes it" is very inspiring. The current state of affairs in the USA is very depressing and recreation allows me forget about it for awhile.
I think he means “entertainment” in that the content entertains the bias of the fans watching “their” side’s narrative. It is a tribal thing. It’s all confirmation has at this point. Even the true reporting.
Exactly. It is like they live in two different worlds, or bubbles in your example. Matt is absolutely correct that they now cater to their perceived audience as opposed to just reporting the truth.
Yes, and for awhile, Trump gained respect by spending hours per day speaking directly to the American people and showing some pretty serious leadership chops. This sent his foes into a panic and they began wildly misrepresenting everything he said (fish tank cleaner and so forth) while minimizing coverage of him actually speaking.
The sad thing is that I'm genuinely surprised that anyone agreed to debate you at all. Wish I were there, sounds like it would be interesting and enlightening.
As polarizing agents within a new business model dependent on engagement and subscriptions, the mainstream media sells validation—of beliefs, not news.
This is because nowadays the subscription-as-membership quality of paying for the news, which is the business model of a desperate, dying industry, means that people aren’t interested in the news so much as they are the news as presented from a certain angle.
Munk Debates has a YouTube channel, hopefully it will be posted there. I've followed them for a while, they've had some great content over the last few years...
Thank you Matt... unfortunately your work peers have no shame. Otherwise your accurate description of the main stream media would shame them into being respected honest journalists. They are not. Not anywhere close. Thank you for underscoring the ridiculous truly FAKE NEWS that has come to permeate the airwaves sans the scrutiny of any “fact checkers.” Excuse my language but it really is a fucking joke.
I'll be watching. As a Canadian I can say our nation dearly needs some outside perspective focused on how dishonest and manipulative our media has become.
Particularly state funded media. CBC, are you listening?
Matt and Douglas Murray? It's Christmas morning early! So excited!!!
Preach!
I think I speak for most if not all T.K. readers when I proclaim, loudly and proudly: "Taibbi in 2024!"
Take no prisoners, Matt. Wish I'd known about this in advance, so I could have listened in person.
It literally does not matter (much) who is acting as the President of America as he is not in charge. The power structure in America has nothing to do with the official flow charts, or that "piece of paper" formerly known as the "US Constitution". The President merely presides over one the several leading power centres. He is not the 'decider'.
Trump found that out. The hard way.
Entirely correct. This is particularly true of US foreign policy. US foreign policy and its long term geopolitical goals is the province of the US State Department and the CIA, not the President, and they in turn decide policy with the Washington think-tanks funded by military and industrial conglomerates.
Obama found this out very quickly when he became President, and so did Trump. The difference is that Obama did as he was told, but Trump did not!
Trump’s ‘mistake’ was that he thought it was the President decided who to negotiate with and who to make a deal with and this was seen as very dangerous to all those people and the massive industry that makes money through never-ending wars and conflict. Trump’s carrot and stick approach might lead to peace breaking out and peace is anathema to the warmongers in Washington.
The people who are the most to blame for this situation are the media, whose job is to tell the truth and expose the totally corrupted US foreign policy military establishment, now being run by the unelected ‘permanent state’. Not only do they not do this, but they themselves have been co-opted and serve as a weapon against anyone who opposes the unelected state or threatens to expose it, even within their own industry, and Assange is the exemplar of this.
The awful shocking reality for me, is that it is the so called ‘liberal’ news outlets who people once trusted; The New York Times, NBC, The Guardian and the BBC etc, have done the most to destroy public trust in the media. They are constantly caught lying, yet carry on as though they are the beacons of democracy and somehow represent a ‘free and honest’ press. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Since the invasion of Granada and Panama and the first Gulf War etc, I have been telling anyone I can: “Do not trust any media at all, particularly regarding foreign policy! Presume they are lying and then try to work your way back to the truth by seeking out those marginalised journalists who have been pushed out for telling the truth and opposing the narrative. John Pilger, Chris Hayes, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal and even a comedian ‘working out of his garage whilst stoned’, Jimmy Dore, (who after all has got more right than TNYT for ****st’s sake!).
Im not sure we can ever return to a mainstream media that is honest, in my lifetime! I think we are seeing an end of a very historically short experiment in western style free-market capitalist democracy, which finally consumed and destroyed itself.
"US Foreign Policy has never changed." - Scott Horton
Excellent, on-point post. Pat Buchanan has been on this since the 90s. The DC foreign policy elites feared Donald Trump more than anything because he was threatening to bypass these corrupt bureaucrats and put an 'America First' doctrine in place (& expose their corruption). That's why they had a collective heart attack over Trump speaking directly with Zelenskyy, and the second impeachment. The American people deserve better.
Do we? Do the American people deserve better? The results of the midterms sadly make me think that we are, civically speaking, too lazy to really engage.
Do our legislators really legislate anymore? Or do "the leaders" and non-elected staff staple together 1,000 unread pages which get passed and the money flows ---- no auditing, of course.
And even though it is a Constitutional co-equal branch of government, no judicial decision is legit if it rules against your interest, right? Just ask our President who totally ignores Supreme Court rulings to impose his Party's will.
Watching the limited reporting of the Chinese protests, and the "non-singing" of the Iranian team at the World Cup --- we American people ARE a privileged bunch, and that includes our protesting class which is always whining about something, will never be satisfied, and will never be at risk like those brave Chinese and Iranians. I am disgusted. Freedom-wise, we have it so easy and we take it so for granted.
Finally, I agree that the elites will do whatever it takes to take out any threat to their system (which it is now obvious they almost completely control). Relentless against Trump. Obvious against Musk. We little people are just along for the ride.
Most bills are not read by the Congress.
"biden" is not in charge
https://youtu.be/1eXOXEKEaQM
So who is?
Look no further than "biden", a demented senile shell of the man who he was once was, aka the "leader of the free world" as good evidence of what I just said.
....and he was always a very mediocre legislator with no good ideas and many bad ones.
His whole miserable career Biden did the bidding of the deep and enduring powers, and of course the rich.
His prison bill resulted a vast gulag unprecedented in history.
Indeed, when I see Biden, I see a corn husk.
Truly. I remember Joe Biden well, never liked him, but he's been there since forever. Joe Biden was smart, and very articulate. He was wrong about everything too, but nevermind.
That Joe Biden is clearly gone. That will happen to most of us if we live long enough. What's bizarre though is how a normal person can watch him struggling hard to form a sentence or to even find the exit in a familiar place, and STILL think, "My President. The leader of the free world!", is perfect proof that partisanship will destroy ones capacity to reason, to even see clearly.
This Biden: https://youtu.be/VIZmZe7fe3E
Versus this 'biden': https://youtu.be/H6uingtAWbk
You got it, Bill. Well said.
It was harder for JFK.
Yep, and we can (strangely) add Nixon to the list!
He pulled out of Vietnam and opened the door to China, both against the wishes of the State Department and the CIA.
What happened to Nixon? He was impeached and resigned based on leaks from the deputy director of the FBI (Deep Throat) who was leaking to The Washington Post, who (in my opinion) knew who he was all along. Nixon’s sin of course was the cover-up and errr...swearing, not the break-in , and today it would be almost politics as usual. But, my point is that it is eerily similar to the Trump story! A President who worked outside of the ‘accepted’ wishes of the unelected state.
Compare Nixon’s and Trump’s ‘sins’ (that the media destroyed them for) against Johnson’s or Reagan’s or Bush’s! It’s almost laughable! Nobody EVER gets impeached for committing provable war crimes and lying the US into an illegal war that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent pple! But, they get impeached and totally destroyed for relatively minor misdemeanors that the media pretends is somehow more relevant!
Nixon did not "pull out" of Vietnam.
He did bring in Vietnamization that reduced the numbers troops.
His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore.
"His secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was a war crime of historic proportions, but no one even remembers that anymore."
Good to remind us Americans of this grim history, but I do want to amend it just a bit: the people of Laos and Cambodia remember those bombings. I know this from talking to some of the descendants of those who experienced it.
Well of course, Nixon was elected on the promise of ending the war, and had effectively reduced the US presence to minimum ground troops and had handed that role back to the South Vietnamese. Saigon fell after Nixon had resigned over the Watergate scandal so we will never know if he would have sent US troops back into Vietnam, but Ford was happy to pull out and end US involvement.
You are correct to point out Nixon’s war crimes, which makes my point. That is not what he was impeached for! He was impeached and resigned over an amateurish break-in by a bunch of clowns which he then tried to cover up.
US presidents are criminalised for trying to end military conflicts and reduce the military budget it seems...
"That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god." - Allen Dulles
"Taibbi in '24?" Could be he's more valuable as one of the few honest journalists left.
Matt, hard to exaggerate the respect I feel for you and your work.
I would have loved to go see the debate. I mentioned earlier attending Greenwald, and some guy, vs Hayden and Dershowitz.
He gutted them.
The audience vote agreed.
*Some guy was actually Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit, who did a reasonable job, but who was totally outshone by the Greenwald. Glenn said later that he did not even care who his debating partner was.
At the reception Glenn refused to shake Hayden's blood-soaked paw.
** I am often censored at Reddit too. Of course I am.
Are we still allowed to say Christmas? I thought saying Merry Christmas was violence.
Yeah. Now it's "Happy Holidays" to avoid triggering someone. The lameness continues to amaze me.
Yes, for sure. I just never heard anyone say it was "violence"
Merry Christmas!
Who said that?
A few weeks ago, I would have agreed with you. However, I recently read the article Murray wrote about the US proxy war in Ukraine (published on the front page of the NY Post), and IMHO, he has sold his soul to whatever force controls The Official Narrative of the collective West regarding Ukraine. I am very disappointed to see that, on this issue at least, Murray seems to be nothing more than an eloquent propagandist with little regard for the facts and truth.
Or maybe he's right about Ukraine too.
Dream on. If you compare his article to the facts, not the lines Zelensky is assigned to recite--which the western media dutifully transcribe--you will find the disconnect to be stunning. I suggest you spend a little time listening to analyses by Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris on the Duran, or reports by Brian Berletic on the New Atlas, or interviews with the likes of Douglas MacGregor or Scott Ritter.
Facts like the Russian military is in complete shambles and is committing war crimes everywhere they go?
You'r clearly not interested in considering any evidence that might prick the bubble of the narrative you subscribe to. Amen. I'm outta this thread.
One of my best friends, a very smart guy, a world traveller, believes every single lie and he loses his mind when I present a counternarrative or actual facts that 99% of the time he never even heard of. When I do that he simply rejects it with a wave of his hand. He won't even look at it.
Propaganda is now proven science. Millions of people can be led, and quickly to believe insane nonsense and then two years, or even two weeks later, believe something else. They won't even remember believing it either.
Don't leave now!!! Not when, "There is light in the end of the tunnel". - General Westmoreland.
"For over 20 years, government officials told the American people that they were winning the war in Indochina. Americans heard encouraging words about the war as far back as 1950, when General MacArthur predicted that 150,000 top French troops should end this war in 4 months." In 1951 President Harry Truman assured Americans that "the Communist attacks in Indochina have been stopped." Similar statements came from President Eisenhower, Attorney General Robert Kennedy Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and of course, President Lyndon Johnson. Perhaps the most famous optimistic statement was made by U.S. commander, General Westmoreland, who assured Americans, "there is light in the end of the tunnel."
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/teachers/lesson_plans/pdfs/unit12_8.pdf
If this were true, it would not be necessary to make up so many tales which turned out to be fake.
They never learn.
Go back some years and it was WMD.
Flash forward a few years and it will be lurid Chinese atrocities in the war on China.
I'm not sure it was "necessary" to blame Russia for the misfired ordinates hitting Poland, but Ukraine really did take Kherson back. That's not a tale that's just what happened.
All war is all lies all the time.
Prove it.
Well, Miles could cite hundreds of breathless MSM missives, missives from an MSM which has been shown to lie shamelessly whenever any US foreign policy interests are involved, but which we can surely trust implicitly this time.
Alex is great. I only recently came to him.
If I had mentioned Alex to my credulous True Believer friend, he would have bellowed out, "WHO?", by which he means, "Is he on the state approved list of honest interlocutors?" Followed by, "Who vetts his facts?" lol
You’re wrong Matt
I mean what you say is right as far as it goes of course. But there is a lot missing.
The good thing about the current phase of the Internet is that it’s easy to find true information. This is despite the fact that the production of such information is generally unremunerated. The media has been lying or getting it wrong in support of the official narrative ever since it was chiselling hieroglyphics into pyramids.
But it doesn’t only get it wrong where there is a political interest or a reader bias. Not every story is political or entertaining. It also gets simple facts wrong. It is and always has been thoroughly unreliable.
For this reason, msm is losing viewers generally and news becomes entertainment, but not very good entertainment, so also loses readers or viewers. You make it sound like they are targeting their viewership well. You neglect that this viewership is constantly shrinking.
The problem here is twofold and neither part is due to the media and you can be sure that no back to the future scenario is ever on the cards.
Firstly, for some reason these institutions retain some prestige and we continue taking them seriously. Why? Why not just acknowledge that what CNN says is no more likely to be intelligent, correct or insightful than some random guy’s opinion that you bump into in a bar? Because this is the truth. To actively seek out that nonsense is a sign of mental illness.
Secondly, people are reading and engaging with the news now much MORE than before. They are mostly disagreeing with msm articles and sharing the views of actual experts. We have a population which is vastly better informed on virology for example than ever before. Well enough informed to actually know more than some professionals. Isn’t that interesting? Some curiosity in mankind has been unleashed by the social web. People care, organise and fight.
But there are two problems with that. The most basic one is the appalling level of education. This is not new but it’s still a disgrace. The second one is that the governing paradigm has broken down and political leadership is in very short supply. So people don’t trust institutions and so they cannot rely on them to effect change. Although we are probably more united than ever, we also feel powerless.
This is a problem of imagination. It is not the fault of the media.
Going forward, new monetisation methods for web content may help to sustain a professional industry and incentivise reliability. This may also have perverse effects though. In any case, until politicians come up with a new story, it little matters how the media present them. We are not being denied a real choice, it is just being made obvious to us that we never had one.
It is NOT easy to find "true" information.
The wikileaks and Snowden stories demonstrate that we are barely scratching the surface.
Just the Panama Papers alone, if fully understood, would overwrite the official narrative of "how the world works".
"If only most people knew that..."
Most people still believe in what I call the "CNN view of the world", which of course barely corresponds to reality.
Zelenskiy is a billionaire. "How did that happen?" I like to ask people that. First they tell me that's not true, then they get mad, then they forget about it.
I have lived and worked in Ottawa long enough to get some glimpses of the real power structure and how it really flows.
Trudeau enacted the EMA (emergency measure act) within a day of 'biden' calling him. Most Canadians will swear, and believe, that "Canada is an independent country."
It's not. The list goes on and on.
Thanks!
*as we can see just by perusing this, or any thread anywhere.
Lol you think that just by reading some shit online you can know "more than the professionals."
"What is truth?"
I definitely knew more about the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines than my doctor when she encouraged me to take the jab.
Right, and when you get cancer, you'll do some online research and treat it yourself right?
This is one of the most servile statements I've read in quite some time.
MSM banks on such deference to authority.
Do you really believe that you know more about medicine than a doctor?
Yeah you do.
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”
—Isaac Asimov
Now excuse while I do my own kidney surgery. LOL LOL LOL
I am the last person you should be saying that too. But nevermind.
When you fly do you often run and bang the cabin door as you scream, "We need to gain altitude now!! You are flying too low! Don't believe what you learned in flight school! Believe me!"
IOW you believe all kinds of bullshit, including what you just said. And that on the basis of a few words that I said.
Your epistemology is shit.
"Pilots? What the fuck do they know about flying anyway?" Bull (shit) Hubbard
We have to keep in mind that not everyone is right 100% of the time. Not even you. When I was a young man it was understood that politics and religion were each realms apart from normal discourse. On these it was expected that even those of similar upbringing might differ radically. It's been perplexing to see this accommodation change so radically in the space of a generation.
See the Youtube-banned documentary "Ukraine on Fire" on Rumble for a Taibbi-like explanation of the background, and how the war was promoted to both Ukraine and NATO by our MIC, permanent government.
Matt at his best! Smash it tonight!
The only thing I'd add (but possibly not for this particular opening) is the modernization of Smith-Mundt that basically ensured the media would be infiltrated by The Swamp. Now we have CIA/FBI 'experts' on every show telling us exactly what to think.
The "modernization" of the domestic anti-propaganda law (Smith Mundt) in 2013 effectively put the State Dept (and CIA, who has done this extensively in foreign countries) in charge of the Official Narratives spewed by what is now State Media. LEGALLY.
It is Operation Mockingbird on steroids, much more advanced than what the Gestapo or Stasi ever did. Propaganda at its finest!
The fact check on this is that this change Obama made only applied to The Voice of America foreign programming. I don’t know what to believe. It is one of those memes that hasn’t gone away and people believe what they want to about it.
Commenterinchief, that's incorrect:
"Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - AMENDS the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government's policies, THROUGH PRESS, PUBLICATIONS, RADIO, MOTION PICTURES, THE INTERNET, AND OTHER INFORMATION MEDIA INCLUDING SOCIAL MEDIA, and through information centers and instructors. (Under current* law such authority is restricted to information disseminated abroad, with a limited domestic exception.)
Authorizes the Secretary and the Board to make available IN THE UNITED STATES motion pictures, films, video, audio, and other materials prepared for dissemination abroad** or disseminated abroad pursuant to such Act, the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994, the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, or the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act.
AMENDS the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987 to prohibit funds for the Department of State or the Board from being used to influence public opinion or propagandizing in the United States. (Under current law such provision applies to the United States Information Agency [USIA].)"
*2012
**"Modern" news media like CNN, having a domestic AND international audience, and the international news availability domestically on the lnternet were two of the initial examples cited as justification for it.
Just imagine what else has been permitted since this was signed into law and tucked into the NDAA "Patriot Act". We may never know as it's probably classified.
It's not a "meme." You misuse the word
Well that is the format I have seen it in for at least 50 times in the last several years. So for lack of a better word, “meme”. Political action, presidential directive, regulatory rule, etc etc
Great piece but I think Matt should have stated with a unifying message. After all, left to right the legacy/ “mainstream” media has one mutual love---------- the military industrial complex ------------ where concern for truth takes a backseat to Raytheon profits and easy money laundering of taxpayer dollars via dead people in some other hemisphere.
Here's an interesting quote from Robert Parry who unfortunately is no longer with us, and was written in 2017. "But neocons’ most astonishing success over the past year may have been how they have pulled liberals and even some progressives into the neocon strategies for war and more war, largely by exploiting the Left’s disgust with President Trump." It was blatantly clear that many on the so called left during the Trump years are also responsible for what is going on now in their endless attack on Trump using the anti-Russia propaganda pushed by the democrats. Not only was it used to attack Trump and prevent him from getting along with Russia but to raise the fears in this country about Russia and further the divide which makes them more suggestive and vulnerable to the lies they push.
If the media is corporately owned, and their bottom line is money there is no incentive for change. Pushing Trump sex lies, and Russia-gate made it more profitable for both sides, whether your talking about the mainstream media in print, or on TV, and their profits only encouraged more lies. I never expected anything from them since they haven't been a source of real news for many years. However, the left are equally guilty and many if not most lost all sense of objectivity during Trump's presidency. What they did was not only to attack Trump, but they embraced the democrats, and became another source of misinformation. I wonder if the media on every level had done their jobs would we be faced with the possibility of nuclear war? I always thought the anti-Russia rhetoric used to delegitimize Trump was a bridge the democrats used to get us to where we are now in the war in Ukraine, after all isn't it just a continuation of our support which we provided in the 2014 coup that ousted a pro-Russian president?
It's Interesting that Taibbi can challenge those who say the election was stolen, when the democratic party spent four years trying to remove Trump from office, labeling him as illegitimate since Russia installed him in office. I am not saying it was stolen, but the democrats gave many cause to feel it was.
"It's Interesting that Taibbi can challenge those who say the election was stolen, when the democratic party spent four years trying to remove Trump from office, labeling him as illegitimate since Russia installed him in office. I am not saying it was stolen, but the democrats gave many cause to feel it was". BINGO!
Yeah, Matt has a bit of a blind spot re: the 2020 election...after Russiagate, Zuckerbucks, the suppression of Hunter's laptop, etc etc etc, does any honest person think that election was legit? The Powers that Be were not going to allow Trump to be re-elected under any circumstances. Period.
It just makes sense that if the democratic party wanted to remove Thump for four years and repeatedly said he was illegitimate and it was the Russians who elected him into office, as Jimmy Carter said, it's not a stretch to think they wouldn't let him have another win. They impeached him in the house because he wanted dirt on Biden, okay if you believe that, but impeach him? The mainstream media, the left treated him like he was illegitimate, so are they going to let him win when they I believe they have a rendezvous with Russia.
Good point, Fran, but one minor correction: it was not just the Democrats who were not going to allow Trump to be re-elected--it was also done with the indispensable support of establishment Republicans. We now know that they would rather lose elections than see the GOP taken over by the populist wing.
Of fucking course! They're like Kang and Kodos- they win either way.
I agree, and I wish they would get rid of McConnell. He's a real career politician, and only wants an acceptable career politician who plays by the rules.
Yes, and the media is supposed to be the impartial watchdog over all political parties and all government behavior. The media should not take sides. A properly functioning media is vital to democracy and should honestly and fairly investigate, report and hold publicly accountable what the government says and does. Perhaps the media as a whole has always been fairly partisan, but its behavior the last 6 years is beyond disgraceful. It has been no better than Soviet Pravda. The media bias towards the Democrats is shameful. There are a great many in both parties who should be exposed for their deceit and wrongdoing. Media bias is apparent in what is NOT reported as well. Hunter Biden's laptop revelations is but one example. I'm disgusted with pretty much all media. Most journalists should be ashamed and embarrassed to be called journalists because they don't do their basic jobs. And yes, democracy IS at risk when the press isn't honest and open. Who else can inform and tell the truth to the public?
They say somewhere back when the media really felt it was there obligation to inform the public of the truth, but when the corporations took over truth was side lined, and money would determine the "truth."
The integration of former CIA directors into news and commentary programs is a stunning departure from anything we've seen before, especially given that they have been instrumental in spreading falsehoods about Trump and denying truths about Biden. Everything that's happened since Trump announced has led many of us to question the ruling class, or deep state, or whatever you want to call it, including the questioning of the 2020 election, which is not "insane," but rather is totally rational given the way the rules were ripped up and rewritten in a way that made the process susceptible to corruption.
Good point. Definitely something the MSM has fully embraced and has no incentive to revisit.
Also that-as if more was needed....
“This is not journalism. It’s political entertainment and therefore unreliable.”. This is one of the best things I have ever read re MSM. I have not watched one second of ANY MSM station, read ANY MSM newspaper in over 8 years. It is no longer reliable.
So... how do you know they are unreliable? How can you tell they get things wrong if you don't even watch "one second" of their content? I find that checking in with these sources from time to time allows me to understand and then effectively push against the narratives they promulgate. It also protects me from being captured by bad faith actors who would like to "interpret" or "explain" things for me, even from the "MSM" media. How do you know you are in opposition to their content if you don't even "see" any of it?
I disagree. Just look at the last 2 years.
I didn’t watch any msm coverage of Covid, and I didn’t read msm coverage much, but I still knew they were spreading a lot of lies. I was looking at World-O-Meter data watching cases in Israel spike in July 2021, right along with their vaccination rate, while my friends who did watch/read msm but weren’t so interested in source data were completely convinced the jabs were 95% effective at preventing infection and that the protection would last “at least a decade, maybe longer.” When boosters came out shortly after that time, they claimed, with zero evidence, it was like “measles shots” that took “more doses” despite the fact the Covid is not measles and the mRNA shots and MMR vaccines use entirely different technology with completely different biological mechanisms that stimulate the immune system in different ways. They didn’t read the Pfizer press release and they weren’t going near the doctor. They watched the evening news and read NYT.
I was in undergrad with all the msm lies, from Fox to WaPo to NYT, about Iraq and the weapons they never had and correlations to Afghanistan that weren’t based in reality. People around me just parroted what they herd on the evening news or read in the paper with zero intellectual curiosity. It’s hard to make conclusive statements without actually watching/ readingthe msm, but as some point replication of outcomes negates the need to keep actually paying attention directly to the msm. At this point one only has to listen to the stuff that comes out of the mouths of the uncritical people who still do.
As a retired scientist who spent too much time talking to colleagues about Covid from the start of the pandemic, I was stunned at the poor Covid response of the US. The mRNA vaccines may have saved vulnerable Covid-naive Elderly and Seriously Ill early on, but overall they have been unmitigated disaster and the CDC, FDA and NIAID have lost much credibility. While it is difficult to interpret all of what happened during the course of Covid (one of my friends claims Omicron is the Jesus virus, as it saved mankind), the association of Covid deaths with universal Covid vaccine campaigns has been noted by many. You mentioned Israel, small countries like the Seychelles and Gibraltar were among the earliest and heaviest vaccinated countries, and had the highest death rates even with "protection". Singapore had almost no Covid deaths until it committed to the universal vaccine campaign despite high numbers of cases in an isolated construction population (they noted that Elderly and Seriously Ill were the ones who died, vaccinated or unvaccinated; unlike the US who claimed Covid was a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated, claiming a 2000-fold protection by the vaccines, Singapore saw a weekly 5- to-10-fold protection and their unvaccinated were largely for medical reasons.) Iceland, who was hailed as a great success for their universal Covid campaign, went from a cumulative 35 Covid deaths immediately after their vaxxes to 219 today. Their chief epidemiologist went from Hero to a misinformation spreader by pointing out that infection-induced immunity (natural immunity) is the only way out of the pandemic: riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/modern-day-censorship/herd-immunity-must-be-achieved-by-transmission-of-the-virus-says-icelands-epidemiologist/ Of course you can cherry-pick the data (the 10,000+ CDC employees are masters!) or just dismiss the evidence (Africa's much better Covid death rate in unvaccinated countries has even been dismissed as "the Africans cannot count". ) The bottom-line is that the first year (pre-vaccine) brought a LOT of natural immunity with each successive wave; this more than anything defeated Covid in many places (arguably NYC and the NorthEastern states with heavy infections and death rates early on, benefitted ).
What we really needed was public debates and discussions from ALL scientists in the field, not the handful of AIDS experts making bad decisions and censoring of all disagreement. That is the way science works (or should work: "Science advances one death at a time" as the older, pig-headed scientists die off). Instead the US has by far the highest number of Covid deaths (Chris Hedges cites the US' 4% of the global population having 20-25% of the Covid deaths. Brazil is 2nd at <700,000 deaths). The US is 16th worse in Covid death rate (3302 per million) of over 200 countries (suspicious minds point out that 13 of the worst below us are near Ukraine-- only 39% vaccinated, but a much lower death rate than most of Eastern Europe-- and its US bioweapons labs).
From a long-term perspective, the CDC's loss of credibility in the eyes of fair-minded people will be the most serious outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic. CDC was revealed to be highly influenced by political actors, to be inept at supporting rapid virus detection in local communities, and to be staffed with an astonishing number of high-paid bureaucrats. Public health threats will continue to emerge in the decades ahead, and our nation is now left without a trusted organization to lead our response. Such a sad and severe fall for what had been one of the most highly respected and nimble agencies in our government.
CDC and Covid aside. I have to observe that "Make Orwell Fiction Again" is probably the best screen name I've seen since the AOL era.
Brilliant, sir or madame! Can we call you MOFA for short?
I can't claim originality! There is a bumper sticker (& other paraphenalia) with it available on Amazon, which I have on my car. I used it because, as Matt repeatedly demonstrates through his writing, it is highly reflective of our time.
Hopefully the Regulatory Authorities will be re-organized; regulatory capture seems to have set in. I'm probably most disappointed in the FDA. My impression used to be that they were pain-stakingly strict but fair. Drs. Marion Gruber and Philip Krause did the right thing by retiring, they clearly were not affecting decisions on the mRNA vaccines (all that the US uses now).
Meta-analysis of the EUA clinical trial data (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072489, Benn et al, Table 1) indicated that in 37000+ subjects in the mRNA vaccinated groups there were 2 Covid deaths and 29 non-Covid deaths; in the placebo groups there were 5 Covid deaths and 25 non-Covid deaths. While there were no statistically significant differences in Covid deaths (2.5-fold "protection") in mRNA vaxxed groups, nor in placebo protection from overall deaths, the overarching result is that the mRNA vaccines DO NOT SIGNIFICANTLY PROTECT against death, the only important endpoint. The EUA approval seems to be based entirely on statistically significant protection against symptomatic Covid (symptomatic Covid was the same endpoint that Gazit et al, 2021 used on a huge Israeli national database meta-analysis with matched populations to show that infection immunity/ natural immunity was 27-fold more protective than the Pfizer jabs). Of course, the EUA clinical trials were the best (only?) Golden Standard double-blinded placebo-controlled studies for the mRNA vaccines, designed (poorly I would submit) by Pfizer and Moderna, but with high numbers of subjects for statistical analysis. Despite showing no protection from death, the mRNA vaccines were approved anyway, and politicians and physicians kept shouting that the mRNAs vaccines might not stop Covid infection nor spread, but they stopped death. The Golden Standard clinical trials showed no effect on deaths. If you argue they blocked symptomatic Covid so MUST lower Covid death, you would also have to argue that natural immunity blocked 27-fold more Covid death. The refusal to acknowledge the science-- from China initially, from Italy and the UK, from Sweden and Iceland, from Africa, from the Far East, from Israel, Qatar, and studies throughout the world-- instead blocking all dissent and even censuring the internet for valid scientific concerns and discussions, is largely why the US has over 1.1 million Covid deaths.
But the important thing is that a lot of people made a lot of money off the pandemic.
It is highly unlikely that CDC, FDA or any gov't organization will be thrown out and rebuilt. The collapse of confidence these organizations ushered onto themselves is remarkable. Complete incompetence.
They once had credibility, but CDC had been dysfunctional for years. I knew many in medical innovation community who had called for it to be privatized because of bloat and dysfunction long before Covid.
You do realize that every year flu vaccination rates rise sharply at precisely the same time that cases of the flu increase nationally?
This is part of the problem with people having no reliable sources and doing their own “research”. Unless they’re experts at interpreting the data, which they usually aren’t, they draw all sorts of erroneous conclusions.
Well, technically I am one of those "experts", but I don't trust them and neither should you. Fauci, Birx, and Redfield were all AIDS experts, hardly interchangeable with a respiratory coronavirus. They NEEDED input from others, but refused discussion. Scientists are hardly affected by crazed views from non-scientists, but often there are insights which we miss or don't appreciate. An open forum for discussion would have saved many Covid victims' lives. I know several modelers and they and I believe natural immunity has been much more important at saving lives than the mRNA Covid vaccines (admittedly a technological marvel, which we will see more, hopefully in cancer, not mild diseases at first).
As to flu, my family is vaccinated and all have the flu (I skipped it this year, but have been flu vaccinated probably the previous ten years, so likely have cellular cross-immunity if not high antibody titers). It's always a trade off, flu kills vulnerable Elderly and the very young, but for most it is an inconvenience, but infection provides stronger future immunity. A pneumonia vaccine is probably more useful for the Elderly as that opportunistically often follows debilitating flu infection. Most virologists know you never get vaccinated during a flu or other epidemic, you get vaccinated a month before. The "experts" also frequently get the variant wrong; at least that is their field, they interact, and follow flu variants in the Southern hemisphere to guess at what's likely coming. Covid "experts" in the West ignored the rest of the World.
I agree with you that many of the policies advocated by the “establishment” left with regard to the pandemic were misguided, although I think a good deal of this had to do more with misunderstanding the social and psychological effects of policies like prolonged lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates, i.e., as opposed to misinterpretation of basic science. In the end, I still happen to think the left was far more correct than the right about the eventual scope of the Covid pandemic as well as the efficacy of vaccines and therapeutics in bringing it to an end.
But sticking with Matt’s apparent thesis here, i.e., that the MSM should be reflexively mistrusted pretty much across the board, I personally think he’s going a bit far. Seems to me the MSM DOES in fact report plenty of things that are verifiably factual and true - examples might include 1) reporting that Russia invaded Ukraine last February, 2) a hurricane severely pummeled Florida a month or so ago, 3) hospital ER’s were clogged with Covid cases back in the spring of 2020, 4) Donald Trump gave a speech on 1/6/2021 claiming he lost the election due to fraud and urging Mike Pence to refuse to certify it, and 5) documents that Trump removed from the White House were recently taken from Mar-el-Lago by federal agents.
Yes, there most definitely is also an MSM “narrative” associated with all of these reports which shouldn’t be there - 1) Putin had no actual basis for feeling threatened by the West, 2) hurricane destruction nowadays needs to be seen as due to climate change, 3) Trump’s mismanagement was clearly the main reason for the Covid surge, 4) Trump was also clearly trying to illegitimately overturn a fair election result when he gave that speech, and 5) Trump removed top-secret documents illegally.
But I guess in the absence of other good, comprehensive sources of information I’m personally not sure it’s the best course to advise people to reflexively disbelieve EVERYthing the MSM reports in favor of doing their own “research”. Doing so seems in my experience to have the psychological effect of turning people so completely away from the MSM that they start instead to confuse correctly reported facts with what’s simply subjective narrative coming at them from the other side of the ideologic divide.
Here are some examples of what I see as widely held but misguided contrarian beliefs that seem to flow from this recommendation to non-selectively turn away from the MSM altogether - assertions along the lines of 1) Covid wasn’t really a particularly serious issue and 96% of the reported deaths were in fact deliberately misreported and due to something else, 2) Covid vaccines not only don’t protect against infection or hospitalization but in fact don’t protect at all and are causing a hidden but massive spike in unreported deaths due to side effects, 3) global temperatures AREN’T actually rising, sea levels aren’t rising either, and glaciers and polar ice sheets aren’t receding because the whole “climate change thing” is just a hoax, 4) the Newtown gun massacre was either staged or never happened, 5) the Bucha massacre was actually a false flag operation perpetrated by the Ukrainian rather than Russian side, 6) Donald Trump actually won MORE popular votes in both presidential elections than either of his opponents because Democrats illegally manufactured millions of votes, 7) the J6 riot was actually a peaceful protest with no preconceived intent on the part of any of the protesters to interfere with certification of the recent election, and 8) a plain majority of American voters actually agree with Trump that the 2020 presidential was stolen.
I obviously don’t think any of these are correct and I think that it’s just as harmful to our civic life to have so many people invested in them as to have so many others equally invested in the MSM’s biased narratives.
I guess my take is that I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful to tell people not to trust the MSM unless one can actually simultaneously provide them with access to a truly more reliable global source of information, which I’m not sensing is being provided by the right wing media in any form. I suppose the implication might be that Matt and Substack writers like him ARE the more reliable source, and I do think that’s substantially albeit not invariably true given that many of them also seem to cater to particular subsets of readers, but another flaw here might be that it’s not really feasible for a single individual to comprehensively and accurately report on the many, many different topics that people rely on to give them an accurate picture of the world. This means that people have to access multiple different sources and individually assess their reliability, which may become an impossible task in the day-to-day world.
I don’t know, maybe the answer is to advocate for people to get their information from as many sources as possible, not necessarily excluding the MSM, but learn to develop more sensitive antennae to distinguish what’s “narrative” from what are simple factual reporting. In any event, I don’t think there’s an easy fix for this problem.
We all see MSM news. It dominates everything. You don't have to specifically read it to not see it. It permeates out into the realm for all to digest. It's crap, and the people writing it know it. I mean, all you need to know about the world today is that the EU and Apple are going to dump Twitter because they no longer have direct lines into the company to control what is said.
How much more do you need to know that we are being sold crap on a puke Milkshake.
I agree- it really makes me wonder how and what Michelle Goldberg is going to try to say to defend/rebut these points in debate.
It is hard to escape what is in the Main State Media (MSM) since the whole society bathes in its narratives. Almost any information in the MSM is also reported in the non-MSM. Either with an opposed bias or an analysis of the MSM.
I spend 5 minutes every morning going to Dutch MSM headlines to be aware of anything urgent. Most headlines can be dismissed out of hand since they tell me that female X did Y for the first time, why female group Z are victims, and how they feel the need to womansplain W to me (in a video). The few articles that are interesting I tend to read. Invariably they quote a spokewoman, even if the topic's field is highly dominated by males. Then the few articles about current events are often a tad narcist, emotional and Manichean; bypassing rationality and argumentation, putting a high contrast black and white filter on problems that are invariably some shade of grey.
Sometimes I slip back to the NYT because it use to have some wonderful specials. However, in the last few years they resemble Scientific American in that somehow they deem it necessary to be unbelievable sexist and racist (in the old fashioned meaning) even if the topic does not warrant its inclusion or discussion.
If find that in talks with MSM readers they tend to be quite ignorant of the facts on the ground. Ask them how much wall T. built and they often think ~5 miles (it was 452 miles). Rarely are they aware of Project Warpspeed's achievements, his prison reform, his effective departmental deregulation rules, the content of the Abraham accords, Title IX reform, foreign policy, while they are still convinced T. was a Russian spy and peed on the bed in Moscow. Worse, any attempt to bring up some of the achievements of T.'s administration are almost invariably blocked by a hysteric reaction about T.'s bad character. Something which I agree on. However, it is still interesting to know how this man was so effective for the people that elected him while Biden seems to be a much nicer grandpa but stumbles in a lot of places: economy, inflation, Afghanistan, Ukraine, racism, sexism, etc.
I think I know the MSM's narrative but the MSM readers tend to be surprisingly oblivious of any events outside their Truman island.
Fair point. My bias is that over the last 8 years they have not come back to reporting the news vs “political entertainment”. Am I wrong?
Not wrong in the least, but as I stated above I find it helpful to confirm my biases periodically. This at least makes me conversant with friends who still consume MSM and allows me to refute their points with the credibility earned by witnessing and understanding the message and methods the MSM employs. It is very effective for me. By the way, I surmise my biases are very similar to yours!
Interesting. I loved that line also, though might have changed "political entertainment" to "political advocacy." (In part because I consider advocacy masquerading as journalism to be anything but entertaining.)
I can relate to this...but, it is no longer possible to avoid political infotainment. It's on tee shirts, coffee cups or worse yet, "trending" on Twitter. Even the Thanksgiving get-togethers had snippets of CNBC contamination. I really want to see what Matt's opponents have up their sleeves.!
The MSM had a left-wing bias when I grew up in the 80s, but the bias appeared to be genuine, reflective of the actual politics of college educated east coast urbanites with no substantive business experience. The contrast today is stark. Though I'm sure he is actually politically left, does anyone think Chris Hayes believes half the things he promotes? If you want a real chuckle, follow Dan Rather on Twitter. It's really quite extraordinary.
The irony is that the only really reliable mainstream (for a given definition of mainstream) print media today is the WSJ. After all the hysteria over Rupert Murdoch's acquisition of the WSJ, it's the only national US newspaper that doesn't daily embarrass itself.
The WSJ is the old NY Times lite. It costs a fortune, as always, and its news stories are suspiciously close to the narratives of the Times and the WaPo. Their article on the Fetterman/Oz debate hid Fetterman's obvious impairment. But the WSJ lets you contact the authors of news stories by providing their email addresses at the end of stories. I emailed one author, expressing my dismay, and he responded, stating that he would share my views of the article with his co-author and editor. Not completely satisfactory, but something. Maybe if more readers communicate directly with WSJ reporters, news coverage would improve.
Not sure if you saw this gem, one of the many "oh, this poor young man" articles on the brain behind the FTX fiasco: https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-frieds-plans-to-save-the-world-went-down-in-flames-11669257574
Reader comments to the article, thankfully, were mainly along the lines of "AYFKM?"
Unfortunately, seeing more and more of The Narrative creeping into the WSJ news articles. As you noted, it's likely due to the social class that journalists belong to.
I don't think I agree with your characterization of the article. The article is about the impact on various charities of the FTX insolvency, rather than the insolvency, but there were a lot of WSJ stories about the insolvency, this just wasn't one of them. I disagree that "this poor young man" is the theme of this article, though. Your claim is hard to square with lines such as:
"...revelations that he mixed FTX’s money with that of its customers...";
"...declared lofty philanthropic goals..." (which I thought was sort of a slap);
"Run by self-described idealists ..."
"...self-described philosopher-executives running the organizations have resigned..."
"...the company’s lawyers said this week that a “substantial amount” of assets were missing and possibly stolen."
"Mr. Bankman-Fried often claimed philanthropy was his primary motivation..."
"Mr. MacAskill distanced himself from FTX as it was crumbling. In a string of tweets, he accused Mr. Bankman-Fried of personal betrayal..."
The article concluded by quoting SBF about his dedication to philanthropy as "this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths [sic.] and so everyone likes us."
I mean...I'm not a PR professional, but - I can't stress this enough - this is not great press.
I'm curious, which lines from this article do you think are narrative-peddling?
I think this is an example of how two people can read the same thing and have completely opposite takes. Perhaps my antipathy for FTX's blatant political buying, and the likelihood that this little shit is going to get away with it, caused me to miss the "shade" (I believe the kids call it) thrown at Bankman-Fried.
I read this as a more straightforward piece on the charities impacted (by accepting looted funds, of course) with a quick discussion of "effective altruism," until we got to the bottom paragraph about "the dumb game we woke westerners play." That's the one line that explicitly said - to me, at least - that hey, this was more than just an unfortunate collapse of a risky business model.
Add the fact that SBF was giving serious cash to ProPublica, Vox, etc., and yes, I am profoundly suspicious of media reporting and bias - all the fish in this industry come from the same pond. Frankly, far better coverage was provided, and is still being provided, by various crypto and finance malcontents on Twitter.
But now that you pulled quotes and reframed them, yes, I can see that there was barbed commentary in the piece. I guess I'd just prefer a scimitar to a barb.
It was never reliable, huge point here.
Regional newspapers were, in the '50s and '60s, reliable and read -- both editions, am and pm. The Chicago Daily New, The Chicago Tribune kept us up-to-date on the goings on in the city council and bidding wars on the corrupt Chicago infrastructure. Yes, there were really "muckrakers" that were respected and revered by Editorial Staff and circulation alike. Broadcast media -- local TV (WGN) and radio were also grassroots oriented. Bear in mind, then the revenue came from subscribers. Now, it's all international consortiums of businesses and investors.
When I was in high school in the 1960s, we lived near Sacramento in CA. At that time there were two newspapers...one conservative leaning and the other liberal leaning. One came out in the morning, the other in the afternoon. My parents always subscribed to both and I grew up reading both. It was always interesting to see the different ways topics were presented, especially in the editorial sections, but at that time, the two points of view weren't as radically different as they are now. And they both reported on all the subjects of the day, it wasn't selective like it is now.
And we, the readers, would "trust" that the varied points of view would give us a kind of consensus or enhanced vision of daily news. It was a very revealing and excellent debate.
Canada's media is arguably even more biased. In addition to the factors you mentioned (which are very much in play up here), our entire media industry is hemorrhaging so much money that various news organizations receive an annual bailout from the federal government. When the Liberal Party is in power, these annual bailouts tend to leave more room for bonuses, so the media has a glaring conflict of interest that has turned them into a PR department for the Liberal Party of Canada.
They demonize even milquetoast centrists like Erin O'Toole as "far right fascists" because they know where their bread gets buttered and they dread the prospect of Conservatives gaining control of the bailout purse strings.
Interesting. Canada seems to be becoming a dystopian hellscape with remarkable speed and this dynamic may explain a little bit of that. Money - the root of, if not all, certainly 'most' evil.
Yeah there are only a handful of outlets that will criticize the Dear Leader, and of course reading any of them gets you placed squarely in the "basket of deplorables".
Last I heard Quebec was still part of Canada. My local press is fantastic. Here in rural Quebec a Free Press is fundamental to democracy and La Tribune is my first read in the morning.
The Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star are colonial outposts of America's oligarchs.
I has always been thus from the days of town criers.
Toronto is home to John Ralston Saul the Supreme authority on press freedom and its evolution.
Last I heard you think Trudeau and Freeland are demigods anointed to rule Canada with divine benevolence, so naturally you'd love media that sings their praises from dawn to dusk, day in and day out.
I've met evangelical Christians who worship Jesus less than you worship Trudeau.
I don't worship anybody or anything. I believe Trudeau and Freeland are doing to the best of their abilities what will most benefit Canadians. I believe them to be sincere in their beliefs which are often very different from my beliefs.
I think you are limited in your understandings from living in your particular echo chamber. Politics is the art of getting along without violence.
I hate stupid and there is just so much I can handle without getting angry.
You speak Newspeak. Words mean only what you prefer them to mean. You are the conflict. You are ignorant and don't even know that you are ignorant.
If I might misquote:
You attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by stupidity.
I discovered myself in Alberta. I was an epiphany. The people tried to do what they believed was good but they had little understanding of cause and effect.
I worked in churches and people believed in Noah.
I am a Jew and I know myth and legend when I see it. I know literature when I see it. I know my bible it is brilliant literature and there isn't a scintilla of history.
Let us start with that fundamental truth.
In Quebec we were able to put that into law.
Darwin is the Messiah on who we are and how we got here.
Try doing that in "English" speaking or Spanish speaking North America.
The theory of evolution through natural selection is a century and half old and today is accepted science. Science is always open to a revolution in thinking. Religion demands we believe in magic.
You believe in magic, I don't.
"I don't worship anybody"..... proceeds to do administer a white washing tongue bath to Trudeau and his fellow society wreckers. Great job, Moe.
You say, "I believe Trudeau and Freeland are doing to the best of their abilities what will most benefit Canadians."
Even after what Trudeau has done in the name of "public health"?
And stupidity may be even more harmful than malice in public servants. Especially a stupidity that is reinforced by a socially destructive ideology.
Hi Moe, I notice your reference to Darwin. I also think the evolutionary perspective is the most explanatory. So, I have a question for you (admittedly off-topic for this particular post).
When Bari Weiss interviewed Netanyahu she asked, “Do you believe that the Jewish people are chosen?” He replied, “Yes. In the sense that we have brought to the world the idea of morality.”
My initial reaction was that his view is simply ignorant of the human condition. Humans have evolved a repertoire of moral sentiments that are adaptive for group scale cooperation--- long before Abraham was around.
But OTOH, even if all of our social dispositions and capacities are evolutionarily based, the particulars of social evolution will exhibit some amount of path dependency. In other words, what do you make of the idea that Judaism changed the “morality” landscape of human social evolution?
Canadian media is definitely worse if that is even possible from what I have seen. The government paying them off ensures it.
Here we go again. Here in Quebec the media is part of our secular humanist liberal democracy. The Montreal Gazette represents a small but vocal ethnic community. Ourmedia is as close to being fully democratic under our economic system.
I failed to detect any political or social bias during our six weeks of political campaigning.
Our last two elections expressed Quebecer's satisfaction with both Ottawa and Quebec City.
I agree with John Ralston Saul. Cynicism is democracy's greatest threat.
I subscribe to La Tribune because I trust them. I subscribe to the Washington Post, New York Times, Montreal Gazette and Toronto Star because I know there slants.
You want a media you can trust you must pay the piper.
The level of satisfaction you see with Ottawa and Quebec City is unprecedented because the media are bias toadies parroting government talking points. They have been bought. We’ve seen news organizations in Quebec loosing government support because they criticized the government. People naively believe the msm is still trustworthy. I hope most wake up soon. Democracy and freedom are at stake.
I am 74 years old. The people are satisfied with the government because they are healthy wealthy and secure. I watched Quebec go from a theocratic plutocracy to a liberal democracy. I watched the University of Quebec turn peasants into doctors, lawyers, engineers and business executives. I remember when New York 21 was rich and we were poor.
I remember Vermont before Bernie Sanders and we called it Mississippi North.
I remember the Montreal ghetto in which I grew up.
We got problems but our grandchildren know the difference between Darwin and the myths, legends and literature of my ancestors.
I remember when people like me weren't welcome in either Catholic or Protestant Quebec and I feel welcome and honoured in a place I wasn't to live in 50 years ago..
I don't like France or England they both hated people who didn't conform to whatever pure laine means in a species that killed off all the competition.
The Greeks, the Romans, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Russians, the English, the Americans, the Holy Romans are not friends of liberal democracy.
Bill21 is my kind of legislation.
I remember my first job and the people in charge were always in charge and most couldn't adapt to technological change.
Most people see only a flat world when we can simulate black holes in space.
Give me a break. I lived in Canada's bible belt. My wife was born in Nashville.
Noah in the bible was the town drunk that is why he wasn't evil.
We are products of natural selection just like my garden snails.
My MLA and MP both respond to my demands and my newspaper makes them pay attention. That is democracy. You can't always get what you want and maybe that is why Quebec believes democracy is worth the travails of compromise.
The gods can take care of themselves . Quebec is taking care of citizens and Je me souviens.
I was born during the padlock laws and my father understood his place in Quebec's theocracy.
Dear Rest of America.
I read your blog. I read your opinions. I thought I offered clear and informed opposition and you banned me for a century.,
I like informed debate. I was brought up to question.
I think I know what it means to be Christian and I don't believe you are anything but a Roman but I am old and have been a stranger in strange lands all my life.
I know what people believe. They believe the things that make it easier to survive their moral and ethical and physical realities.
I am a Deist, I reject all religion whether is be theological, economic, social, or political
If you want to talk Christianity lets talk about Jesus not Rome.
I understand the poetry and the humanity. My God is the God of the universe not the Temple.
I am slow, so slow that at 74 I have more to learn about the world now than when I was 60, 50, 40, or thirty.
I do not understand your public personna. I have only questions to ask. I do not understand why you insist on knowing the answers we were to discover for ourselves.
The bible says we became human when we ate the forbidden fruit.
Yes, I do talk to Jesus. He is part of me because I am a part of the Universe.
I know Jesus believes in Darwin.
I know the difference between the moment and the infinite. I studied First Centuru Judaism and the Roots of Christianity with a a Rabbinical zealot.
I believe I understand what Jesus said but I also understand he could neither read nor write because he was a simple peasant not chosen to lead by divine providence.
David was anointed by the High Priest, Jesus was pissed upon by the chosen of God.
Real Christians understand being pissed upon. America's Evangelicals are pissers who like pissing on people they are not Christians.
Dude, are you drunk?
I suppose it’s still preferable to corporate interests controlling our media. Don’t you agree - would you really want Telus or RBC or Suncor deciding? Some billionaire? At least the governments can change and flex things in different directions with some supposed citizen oversight and mandate.
I do like having a true nationwide news service that better unites us. Perhaps it draws more bleeding hearts and leftists - but we are a more socialist democratic kind of nation than where I used to live below the 49th.
Was it all that great that our last Federal Conservative government muzzled any federal employee - not speaking through the Harper filter was verboten. So transparency suffered ...while the spending was better kept in check. I think it’s probably a better balance and chance that we have here with news in Canada. With different governments,by the people, morphing our national broadcaster - but not destroying it!
However! - I still see on the world stage our broadcaster spews out the company line/propaganda of our allies. Case in point: Ukraine. More arms/more soldiers/we are always in the side of freedom fighters. All the parties push this superficial crap. Afghanistan, for example, cost us way way more than any extra budget for the CBC ever could. You could run the broadcaster for 200 years with the money we poured down the toilet winning the hearts and minds of Afghanis. ugh.
Being Albertan, I honestly think I'd take Suncor fatcats over Ottawa tax-leeches in terms of who gets to skew my news.
Transparency hasn't really improved under Trudeau, spending has just ballooned out of control.
Oh yeah - the spending thing is going to be a big big problem. My poor grandkids ( as yet, not born). But a democratic government ( with campaign finance laws in place!!!! Yay) controlling the national broadcaster is still the best option. Incremental and piecemeal changes - just like Popper argues in the Open Society. It’s the least worst system. I hope you are joking about having an oil patch business run the news. Suncor (or any corporation or monarchy or dictator) would be what he calls an enemy of the open society. The argument is sound. We can hopefully always get rid of our government peacefully in our system.
"We can hopefully always get rid of our government peacefully in our system."
Depends how many people buy into the CBC message that this government must stay in power eternally or else Canada will be overrun by fascism. I don't think Popper was a big fan of Pravda or other state-controlled media, nor did he consider Pravda a component of an open society. CBC is basically Liberal Pravda at this point.
Miles,
You have no understanding of economics. I met my wife when she was doing her doctorate at University of Calgary. I worked for a conservative MLA. I studied the Rainy-day fund or should I say rainy day fun. They stole more money than Exxon Mobil and BP combined.
I understand greed but give me a break.
Alberta makes Ottawa's den thieves look like Catholic monks.
Calvin is Alberta's middle name.
Alberta's chosen are the wealthy and powerful and justice is for suckers.
I used to bum coigarette with Ralph, he wasa the Biblical Noah. He was the town drunk but basically he was just RALPH a great and loyal friend and a Useful Idiot.
I like Lethbridge but your current Premier is not exactly Albert Einstein or the Rock of Gibraltar.
That was a lot of autism and not a lot of coherent thought
> “At least the governments can change and flex things in different directions with some supposed citizen oversight and mandate.”
Then - but they lie in lockstep to get us to support an immoral and wasteful war.
You disproved your own point!🤣
Point taken.
I am disheartened by any media that acts like courtiers to everything the government and military spews. Especially about wars. All the propaganda- even, dare I say, about WWI and WWII and how completely fabulous and noble we all were winning those. Politicians and war mongers/profiteers will lie. I just expect the media to know this and not push the propaganda without any question.
So I write my MP and I vote trying to get people in there with some independence. I write my media. I fight to stay open-minded. I’m scared that so many people are so easily convinced by shallow “news”.
And, still, it’s a decent place we live. We can disagree and argue and I can accept my person doesn’t win some elections. We keep tweaking -without violence - and hope the media can keep a check on power rather than be in bed with it.
Nothing against what you've accomplished here, Matt, but we now have a situation in which telling extremely basic, undeniable truths—as you have here—is not only rare but controversial, in a profession that equally literally and farcically claims the truth as its bottom line.
I hope Gladwell and Goldberg leave the exchange deeply ashamed of themselves and their employers, but I'm guessing they won't.
They are deep in their well paid bubbles, where pangs of conscience cannot intrude.
I suspect Matt is well paid these days. Is that a bad thing?
The key is *who* they're paid by.
Yeah? Wait a while-SubStack will soon become “them.”
How so?
Because it will get large, become institutional and people will start hating on it and moving elsewhere. De-institutionalizing is the new watchword-out with the old, in with the new.
You put that very well, Chesterview!
Please. Gladwell is a legend in his own mind. His brain would explode If for five minutes he lost sight of his reflection in a mirror. Blech.
Goldberg is even worse - she once wrote an article thanking Randi Weingarten for all her work fighting *against* school closures. How's that for revisionist history?
I love ya, Matt, but the 2020 election was stolen; 2022 was even worse in the same counties. Ignoring the proof is the same sin committed by your opponents tonight.
And the 2022 'fortification' ensured that 2024's 'fortification' is on track.
Agreed but I'm forced to respect the nuance of the 2022 falsity. The outcome is just barely plausible given the state of the economy etc. It was a carefully calibrated balancing act with a few specific critical wins like PA and AZ. Final result is the most They could get away with.
The Regime is really upping their election manipulation game. Watch the bellwether counties in 2024, They forgot to fix them in 2020.
Exactly, AND those are the places they have to win in 2024.
And let's not forget every county critical to win had the, uh, er, "unpredictable" problems counting votes in less than a week. And, er, the "feature" where each one yielded a come-from-behind victory of just enough votes all at the very end, 3+ days after the election DAY.
How many coincidences before coincidence is impossible?
I say we're long, long past that point.
We can no longer make assumptions about how elections will swing based on the economy. I mean does anyone believe a majority of voters chose to reward the current policies that have increased our taxes 30% via inflation and the admin’s threat of global nuclear annihilation?
It is all about ballot harvesting now. When dems can harvest the ballots personally or via mail of tens of thousands of uninterested and uninformed people on government welfare in the precincts they know they must win then Republicans will never win again. Both parties agreed mail in voting was susceptible to massive fraud just a short time ago. Covid gave the Dems the excuse to roll it out nationwide.
What are the bellwether counties and why are they bellwethers?
Do an internet search for US bellwether counties. They are supposedly based on past elections over decades counties whose choice for president mirrored the winning candidate. Now with ballot harvesting and mass mail in voting bellwether counties are a thing of the past.
The reason it was brought up is because all but one bellwether country went for Trump in 2020 which, absent harvesting and mail in ballots is statistically impossible, and we all know how that ended up.
Agreed, I encourage everyone to see the spreadsheet that shows how incongruous the 2020 election was. I'd post the spreadsheet but I cannot. Google it even if that puts you on heightened surveillance.
It is not a "thing of the past". It is an undeniable historical record.
IMO the current push we see everywhere suggesting "ballot harvesting made the difference" is yet more psyop bullshit. This is meant to divert R effort and money to fruitless ends. Encouraging you to spend your time and money on a massive grassroots goose chase.
The cheat is in the counting and the Dominion machines which can be controlled remotely. They simply add the votes needed to win. Thus massive 2020 voter turnout not seen since women got the right to vote.
Yes I think R efforts to harvest ballots 2024 would help. But unless the presidential polls are as wrong as 2016 the thumb on the scale from the Regime will win.
I don’t know if the 2020 and 2022 elections were stolen. What I do know is that if they were and if there was a smoking gun proving that they were, half the country would never hear about it.
Even if they did hear about it half the country either wouldn’t care or believe it because their candidate won.
Exactly. The federal SCOTUS ruled the PA law the PA SOS changed for mail in ballots was illegally changed. The MI and WI courts have ruled those states changed their election laws illegally as well. I don’t know how much evidence one needs but there is plenty out there to see.
That election laws were changed, "illegally" or not, is not evidence of fraud. Only fraud is evidence of fraud, and none has been any proven thus far. When Republican election supervisors in Republican states say the elections were clean, and the Cyber Ninjas hired *specifically* by the AZ GOP to "prove" fraud came up emptyhanded . . .
"2020 was stolen!!" from Trump fans is as tiresome as "2016 was stolen!!" from Hillary backers. Nothing was stolen, we all need to get on with our lives and make sure 2024 voting is fair and square.
Thanks! It wasn’t difficult TBH. I’m not taking anything away from Nancy Drew’s talent.
The "irregularities" are almost too many to count. The case of Pennsylvania is a real eyebrow-raiser. Joe Torsella, the Democratic secretary of state, widely considered a 2022 gubernatorial candidate, lost to a Republican challenger by nearly 80,000 votes. It was the first time since 1994 that a Republican beat an incumbent Democratic statewide officeholder and capped a brutal election cycle for Pennsylvania Democrats in down-ballot races. A Republican won the state auditor’s race by 200,000 votes. And the Democratic minority leader of the Pennsylvania state senate, a thirty-year incumbent, lost to a Republican. So, quite the "Red wave" in the state of Pennsylvania, but Biden still managed to win by 80,000 votes. It was also very sketchy that on election night itself, in key swing states where Trump held large leads — Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan — election officials shut down and stopped counting votes. When the lights came back on the next morning, Biden was in front in all.
https://euphoricrecall.substack.com/p/why-folks-question-the-2020-election/comments
Agree. At this point the validity of elections is subject to legitimate inquiry.
Courage!
lulz.
stolen?
no ssdd. they have all been manipulated, for decades. trump himself knows this, which why he did absolutely ZERO about when he was in office. he knew it was over, so hes milking suckers like you hard for every penny and emotion possible. hes a vampire
that jackass served the swamp just as hard as any other fool
trump IS biden
"trump IS biden"
Which personality is wearing a wig and which has natural hair?
Correction: "Actually the 2000 election was ALMOST stolen." The Democratic Party media called Florida for Gore before the polls had closed in the most Republican part of the state. The media people didn't know that Florida is in two time zones! They called the state after the polls closed in the EST but before they closed in the CST part (Pensacola, etc.). Estimates are that at least 5000 Bush voters left the line before voting after hearing that their candidate had lost.
Excuse me, but most cars had radios, and there were lots of small portable radios that people carried. And the word quickly spread in the lines of people still waiting to vote.
Don't feed the troll.
You are wrong. The news was broadcast 45 minutes after the polls closed in the Eastern Time Zone, but 15 minutes before the polls closed in the Central Time Zone. And all of the many news stations were reporting on the election results continuously.
You’re very brave, Matt, and I admire you for it. You run the risk of being labeled a right wing nut job now, when you could easily have looked the other way and become a superstar. I’m especially grateful to you and Walter Kirn for your Friday show. I’m looking forward to it this week. Good luck tonight.
Becoming known as a right wing nut job is increasingly a sign of integrity. I am starting to suspect people that don't come with that label.
No right wing nut job actually believes they are a right wing nut job. No left wing nut job believes they are a left wing nut job.
That’s exactly why extremist views are so difficult to eradicate. Everyone is speaking, no one is listening.
“The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The enemy isn’t Republicans or Democrats. The enemy is extremism. It always has been and always will be.
>>The enemy is extremism.
This belief is why activists work so hard to shift the Overton window. If you push the boundaries far enough, the "extreme" becomes "normal" and vice versa.
That's the danger when you allow mainstream thought to shape your opinions.
Well-said, LJN.
I'm genuinely curious to see how any intelligent person could claim with a straight face that the MSM hasn't morphed into a cross between Pravda and the KGB, or that the NYT etc isn't the enforcement arm of the Democratic Party and the "L'Osservatore Romano" for the Social Justice religion.
Go get em, killer!
This IS NOT entertainment. And stop with that "everybody does it" bullshit. The shit we are being provided by said MSM is part of a larger conspiracy to divide us and destroy not only Western Civilization, but even the basic elements of what constitutes a healthy family, heck, a healthy individual. Women can hav dicks, men can get pregnant, paedophilia is a just another preference, all of humanity's triumphs and achievements squeezed through the fecund sphincter of "racism." Free speech and freedom bad, censorship and ostracization of "unbelievers" good.
Well, I mean, the destruction of civilization is pretty entertaining.
As long as you're on the sidelines watching it. When you're caught in the middle of it, it kinda sucks. But it helps to be old.
It is until it's not.
The movie's even better. Great sound and graphics! On our screens now.
Same script. Different cast, like the new "Tarzan Forever!" (title in paraphrase). They still have CIA Agent Friendly (Martin Freeman, who usually plays agreeable roles) though I'm still not sure why his character is in the movie, and after watching Freeman interviewed I'm not sure he is either. In the first movie, when he is introduced, my immediate first thought was Lumumba.
"The shit we are being provided by said MSM is part of a larger conspiracy to divide us and destroy not only Western Civilization, but even the basic elements of what constitutes a healthy family, heck, a healthy individual."
This is certainly the effect, but rather than conspiracy I think it reflects the fact that the staff are college graduates, or at least have had some college, which means they have likely contracted the social disease of neo-Marxism, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.
Their perverse assumptions about what is right and good are reflected in their advocacy of the social pathologies you list here. It makes the progressive corporate media the footsoldiers of the intelligentsia, tearing society apart, keeping us at each others' throats, while lifetime bureaucrats in DC play their power games to god knows what end . . . evidently some sort of global totalitarian order.
I hate to agree, but you maybe on to something. A recent example, I have subscribed to the National Hockey League broadcasts for over a decade. I have been a hockey fan for fifty years. I know the audience who enjoy hockey, I've seen them in the stands and on broadcasts forever.
Last year a new commercial started to pop up during a game, not one or twice but I'm guessing ten times during one game. The commercial shows a young Hispanic man drinking Jägermeister while in a party scene. The young man has lots of ink, including facial tattoo's which maybe popular in some circles, but to me it seemed to be missing the target audience. I've seen lots of hockey fans but don't recall any with facial ink. I struck it up as a business decision. Possibly Jägermeister purchased lots of airtime and ESPN+ had to fill them in somewhere. Since I'm old and grew up before ink became popular, seeing someone with facial ink was a little different. But after the season I had seen that commercial over one hundred times and facial ink became more normal.
As this years NHL season got close I thought, "well at least I won't have to see that commercial again" (I say the same thing about any ad I seen too many times) as I renewed my NHL subscription. Well, I was somewhat correct. That commercial has been replaced by a brand new Jägermeister ad featuring the same young man. Looks like he had some additional facial work done in the offseason adding additional facial ink. Good news is they found another sponsor to advertise. The new sponsor is touting the benefits of a drug which helps to stop the transmission of HIV. The ad shows numerous couples engaged to fun times with smiles and joy, frolicking and dancing around. They appear to be gender fluid.
I have watched games this year where these were the only commercials aired for the entire broadcast. These ad's being pushed to a Hockey audience seems misguided and a poor value for the sponsors. But repeated watching of this content can change perceptions I imagine.
I use Hulu for my TV source. If I want the best features available, like a DVR and "No Commercials" I must sign as a Disney Plus client, not other options available per Hulu. I'm showing up as a Disney Plus subscriber even though I never view or in any way desire Disney content.
There are anti western cultural psy-ops being run against us all over the media. It is an everywhere all at once campaign and will devastate our societies. They call it “progress” just to demoralize and humiliate us harder.
Interesting insight, indeed.
Let me throw this your way - somewhat taken from Chomsky: the fact that you have sat so many hours watching the NHL itself is also a great way for the powers that be to keep you distracted and content. While we support the wars let’s keep the masses focused on Lord Stanley. Or the NFL or whatever. But the really important issues that could get rather sticky and embarrassing if the masses focused on them instead?....can’t have that. More Jager and “controversy” about someone showing a nipple at halftime!!!!
Good thing I been aware of the powers of which you refer to and refuse to buy into their narratives. I've never considered myself to be one of the masses. I have never supported any war, all of which we started, in my lifetime. I'm not so sure many of today's masses possess the ability to focus and accurately decipher current issues. I also believe that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy. The best part is watching these raw, young kids grow into professionals. Their dedication to becoming as good as they can be and willingness to walk through walls for their teammates. The time, money and dedication sacrificed by their parents to get them to the pro level is worthy of praise and the pride and joy those parents feel when their child finally "makes it" is very inspiring. The current state of affairs in the USA is very depressing and recreation allows me forget about it for awhile.
Pay no attention to the scolding from these moralizers.
The Roman emperors used “bread and circus” as a distraction. Nothing new under the sun.
I think he means “entertainment” in that the content entertains the bias of the fans watching “their” side’s narrative. It is a tribal thing. It’s all confirmation has at this point. Even the true reporting.
Exactly. It is like they live in two different worlds, or bubbles in your example. Matt is absolutely correct that they now cater to their perceived audience as opposed to just reporting the truth.
Yes, and for awhile, Trump gained respect by spending hours per day speaking directly to the American people and showing some pretty serious leadership chops. This sent his foes into a panic and they began wildly misrepresenting everything he said (fish tank cleaner and so forth) while minimizing coverage of him actually speaking.
The sad thing is that I'm genuinely surprised that anyone agreed to debate you at all. Wish I were there, sounds like it would be interesting and enlightening.
As polarizing agents within a new business model dependent on engagement and subscriptions, the mainstream media sells validation—of beliefs, not news.
This is because nowadays the subscription-as-membership quality of paying for the news, which is the business model of a desperate, dying industry, means that people aren’t interested in the news so much as they are the news as presented from a certain angle.
Sure, the common-sense angle, or at least an attempt to avoid political bias or make such bias explicit up front.
Yikes. I think you’re right. ....yikes!
Dude! Will we be able to hear or watch the debate online at some point?!?!?! How? We can't wait. Make us sane people proud!!!
Munk Debates has a YouTube channel, hopefully it will be posted there. I've followed them for a while, they've had some great content over the last few years...
It's been a while, but I've heard some great ones from Munk as well
Thank you Matt... unfortunately your work peers have no shame. Otherwise your accurate description of the main stream media would shame them into being respected honest journalists. They are not. Not anywhere close. Thank you for underscoring the ridiculous truly FAKE NEWS that has come to permeate the airwaves sans the scrutiny of any “fact checkers.” Excuse my language but it really is a fucking joke.
If I were Gladwell and had to follow that I would concede the point and beg forgiveness
Best of luck at the Munk debates tonight, Matt.
I'll be watching. As a Canadian I can say our nation dearly needs some outside perspective focused on how dishonest and manipulative our media has become.
Particularly state funded media. CBC, are you listening?
We're rooting for you Matt! Crush them with principles and facts!