Media Bias

[Hermit]

Yabbut what about Jessie Smollett? He was a liar too, wasn't he?

[Joe]

Never heard of him. Is he another one of our member from Yellowknife's news sources?

[Hermit]

Never heard of him. Is he another one of our member from Yellowknife's news sources?

Jussie Smallett (note corrected spelling) became one of his favourite diversions from whatever he prefers to not discuss after mentions of Hillary Clinton's emails and her role in the murder of Seth Rich turned out to be nothingburgers. These days he has taken a liking to mentioning a laptop allegedly owned by Hunter Biden.

[Brian Peacock]

My guess is that the corporate media should direct which entertainers you deem acceptable and which you deem heretical.

It's really best for CNN, twitter and every one of the blue-anon group.

Why give them that power? Why be a passive recipient of news media or political messaging? We do have choices and options here, you know.

You speak as if everybody uncritically accepts whatever press release, news item, corporate or political messages appears in their window of attention. You don't think that this applies to yourself of course, you think you're more discerning and critical of things, but you do seem to assume that everybody else just soaks it up like blotting paper. It seems to me that this view is just another facet of narratives which claim that truly reasonable people cannot make truly reasonable choices or hold truly reasonable views if they differ from those of the orthodox and alt-Right.

I suppose my question is; who's telling you these kinds of stories and why are you so eager to believe them?

It's a recurring theme for our member from Yellowknife, but how can you take it seriously when he spouts garbage from the discredited criminal James O'Keefe without corroboration from more reputable sources?

I write it off as ad-hominem nonsense and low effort trolling.

I think I take it seriously because it's a trope of the current political and media landscape, and I consider those things serious and important things to think and talk about. I might be wrong there though.

I knew as I was writing my post that our Canadian friend would probably take it as only addressing his character, simply because the Right predominantly frames issues in those terms already, and because he is a consumer of orthodox and alt-Right media. I knew that however genuine and honest my question was it would probably be ignored and taken as an illicit attempt at a 'gotcha', because the orthodox and alt-Right message machine always ascribes moral malignancy to analysis, criticism and challenging of their world view - "Nobody could ever have genuine or valid reasons for thinking those kinds of things or asking those kinds of questions, therefore they must be bad people out to get us," etc.

The roots of this are deep, dark and complex, but ultimately I don't think they're actually founded in a simple reading of character - us good, them bad - that's just the terms in which things are framed and expressed. And to some extent you're right: to engage with this, even to offer an analysis or to issue a challenge, is to lend the ad-homs and low-level trolling of the orthodox and alt-Right some validity under their spuriously circular logic that it kind of proves their point back to them.

It's a type of political pathology really and like Bruce Willis in the 6th sense, while I've seen and continue to see this "everywhere", but it's only towards the end of the story that I've come to realise what my role is in the plot!

To extend the metaphor, what can we do about it now the movie is over and we're leaving the theatre with the epic theme tune still ringing in our ears and a palpable sense of disquiet? If we openly analyse, criticise, or challenge these orthodox and alt-Right narratives then we risk validating their narrators, and if we ignore them then we risk them being normalised and gaining ground across the landscapes of mainstream politics and social discourse.

I guess to some degree the latter has already happened. When people with middle-of-the-road and soft Right views are routinely vilified as evil extremists, far-left radicals, socialists, communists and/or anarchist; when enough people can believe an election was 'stolen' from the candidate who most people clearly didn't vote for, and then be marshalled and motivated to storm the seat of govt looking for blood; and when alt-facts, lies, conspiracy theories, and wish-fulfilment fantasies are championed as copper-bottomed truths and amplified across society - from workplaces to pulpits, social media channels like Prager and Project Veritas to Murdoch's many many outlets etc - perhaps those of us who the Right have already placed on the 'wrong' side of the fence have already lost control of the plot.

What if it turns out we're not just on the wrong side of the fence now, but on the wrong side of history too?

[Joe]

Never heard of him. Is he another one of our member from Yellowknife's news sources?

Jussie Smallett (note corrected spelling) became one of his favourite diversions from whatever he prefers to not discuss after mentions of Hillary Clinton's emails and her role in the murder of Seth Rich turned out to be nothingburgers. These days he has taken a liking to mentioning a laptop allegedly owned by Hunter Biden.

Yes, I noticed the misspelling and made a small joke about it.

But if you bring up Smollet, aren't you providing his diversion for him?

[L'Emmerdeur]

O'Keefe isn't a discredited criminal, but I can guess why you might repeat such unsupported hogwash.

It's a political view, approximately. The 'blue anon conspiracy'.

No need to call you out on it either. It's better to let you 'win' your point. Congrats, Joe!

You won't call me on it because you hoped I wouldn't see this horse poo and blow it out of the water. Well, you tried!

O'Keefe was convicted of entering real property belonging to the United States under false pretenses and was given three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service. He's a criminal by definition.

Faking a story discredits a journalist, whether it's Brian Williams and his helicopter story or O'Keefe's sleazy faked ACORN recordings. Make shit up and you are untrustworthy as a journalist - end of story. But of course, con artists like O'Keefe have to work, so there's the time he sent a woman to the Washington Post with a fake story about getting pregnant by Roy Moore, or his debunked claim that Ilhan Omar’s campaign was ballot harvesting. Remember the kill cops script controversy?

That's classy company you're keeping there.

The twat was even banned from raising money in Florida. Florida, for Pete's sake! Now that's discredited.

Give it up, Cunt. I don't need you to let me win any points. I can do that on my own.

Now man up and answer Brian's questions, and quit the silly trolling.

For the 'criminal' part, if you go by the stupid dictionary, yeah. Who does that?

The 'discredited' part can be seen as more subjective. The 'all they got is that ACORN thing' thrust has been riposted at least once before. Probably by Hermit as well, but with some latitude 'all they got' can render any number of offences irrelevant. After all, O'Keefe has a list of retractions, or something.

[Tero]

Disney holdings in a giant diagram
https://storage.googleapis.com/titlemax ... ion-lg.jpg

[Joe]

O'Keefe isn't a discredited criminal, but I can guess why you might repeat such unsupported hogwash.

It's a political view, approximately. The 'blue anon conspiracy'.

No need to call you out on it either. It's better to let you 'win' your point. Congrats, Joe!

You won't call me on it because you hoped I wouldn't see this horse poo and blow it out of the water. Well, you tried!

O'Keefe was convicted of entering real property belonging to the United States under false pretenses and was given three years of probation, a fine of $1,500 and 100 hours of community service. He's a criminal by definition.

Faking a story discredits a journalist, whether it's Brian Williams and his helicopter story or O'Keefe's sleazy faked ACORN recordings. Make shit up and you are untrustworthy as a journalist - end of story. But of course, con artists like O'Keefe have to work, so there's the time he sent a woman to the Washington Post with a fake story about getting pregnant by Roy Moore, or his debunked claim that Ilhan Omar’s campaign was ballot harvesting. Remember the kill cops script controversy?

That's classy company you're keeping there.

The twat was even banned from raising money in Florida. Florida, for Pete's sake! Now that's discredited.

Give it up, Cunt. I don't need you to let me win any points. I can do that on my own.

Now man up and answer Brian's questions, and quit the silly trolling.

For the 'criminal' part, if you go by the stupid dictionary, yeah. Who does that?

The 'discredited' part can be seen as more subjective. The 'all they got is that ACORN thing' thrust has been riposted at least once before. Probably by Hermit as well, but with some latitude 'all they got' can render any number of offences irrelevant. After all, O'Keefe has a list of retractions, or something.

Yep, I read your post and several from Hermit, but Cunt did accuse me of repeating "such unsupported hogwash" so I felt compelled to come to y'all's defense.

[Cunt]

All very interesting, but you still haven't considered the evidence he brought forward, which discredits CNN MUCH more than anything you dug up on O'Keefe.

Difference is, lots of people believed CNN, whether about 'orange man bad', or covid deaths, or anything else.

Why not reference the wikipedia article about him? By the way, I just listened to an interview with a Mr. Sanger, one of wikipedia founders.

You can keep digging all you like about his past, but you won't convince me he is any worse than CNN, CBC, NBC, ABC, Disney or any of the other corporate media liars.

Feel free to dismiss the facts and undercover recordings he revealed, too. I mean, if the facts are at all important. I do enjoy reading you sharing your opinions about his personality though. It's an important part of the media smears about him.

[Joe]

Why should I, when he fakes his evidence?

I've supported my claim that he is a discredited criminal, and I don't see you contesting that.

Try and change the subject all you want, but you're the guy who screamed like a scalded monkey about the Democrat's impeachment tape being edited, rejecting it without even looking at it. Now you're crying when the same standard is applied to your source, who is clearly suspect?

Perhaps you should check your own biases and quit bloviating about others'.

[Cunt]

The impeachment tape? For which? The sham first impeachment? The purely partisan second one? Or is there a third in the works? lol

I heard the CNN exec saying things, O'Keefe wasn't involved until later. Now I've heard CNN's response.

...crickets...

And I know that no matter how firmly they admit their propaganda, you will assume O'Keefe is the villain here.

Oddly, exactly as one would, if the propaganda attacks on him were as effective as the funders predicted.

[Joe]

The impeachment tape? For which? The sham first impeachment? The purely partisan second one? Or is there a third in the works? lol

I heard the CNN exec saying things, O'Keefe wasn't involved until later. Now I've heard CNN's response.

...crickets...

And I know that no matter how firmly they admit their propaganda, you will assume O'Keefe is the villain here.

Oddly, exactly as one would, if the propaganda attacks on him were as effective as the funders predicted.

You're funny when you sputter.

[Cunt]

You and CNN aren't making a good case for O'Keefe being wrong.

I'll count you among the unofficial 'wall of retractions' until your comments rise to officialdom.

What did they say about it, by the way? CNN? Did they disavow the statements about their propaganda efforts? Or will they just continue to report 'The News'?

[Joe]

My guess is that the corporate media should direct which entertainers you deem acceptable and which you deem heretical.

It's really best for CNN, twitter and every one of the blue-anon group.

Why give them that power? Why be a passive recipient of news media or political messaging? We do have choices and options here, you know.

You speak as if everybody uncritically accepts whatever press release, news item, corporate or political messages appears in their window of attention. You don't think that this applies to yourself of course, you think you're more discerning and critical of things, but you do seem to assume that everybody else just soaks it up like blotting paper. It seems to me that this view is just another facet of narratives which claim that truly reasonable people cannot make truly reasonable choices or hold truly reasonable views if they differ from those of the orthodox and alt-Right.

I suppose my question is; who's telling you these kinds of stories and why are you so eager to believe them?

It's a recurring theme for our member from Yellowknife, but how can you take it seriously when he spouts garbage from the discredited criminal James O'Keefe without corroboration from more reputable sources?

I write it off as ad-hominem nonsense and low effort trolling.

I think I take it seriously because it's a trope of the current political and media landscape, and I consider those things serious and important things to think and talk about. I might be wrong there though.

I knew as I was writing my post that our Canadian friend would probably take it as only addressing his character, simply because the Right predominantly frames issues in those terms already, and because he is a consumer of orthodox and alt-Right media. I knew that however genuine and honest my question was it would probably be ignored and taken as an illicit attempt at a 'gotcha', because the orthodox and alt-Right message machine always ascribes moral malignancy to analysis, criticism and challenging of their world view - "Nobody could ever have genuine or valid reasons for thinking those kinds of things or asking those kinds of questions, therefore they must be bad people out to get us," etc.

The roots of this are deep, dark and complex, but ultimately I don't think they're actually founded in a simple reading of character - us good, them bad - that's just the terms in which things are framed and expressed. And to some extent you're right: to engage with this, even to offer an analysis or to issue a challenge, is to lend the ad-homs and low-level trolling of the orthodox and alt-Right some validity under their spuriously circular logic that it kind of proves their point back to them.

It's a type of political pathology really and like Bruce Willis in the 6th sense, while I've seen and continue to see this "everywhere", but it's only towards the end of the story that I've come to realise what my role is in the plot!

To extend the metaphor, what can we do about it now the movie is over and we're leaving the theatre with the epic theme tune still ringing in our ears and a palpable sense of disquiet? If we openly analyse, criticise, or challenge these orthodox and alt-Right narratives then we risk validating their narrators, and if we ignore them then we risk them being normalised and gaining ground across the landscapes of mainstream politics and social discourse.

I guess to some degree the latter has already happened. When people with middle-of-the-road and soft Right views are routinely vilified as evil extremists, far-left radicals, socialists, communists and/or anarchist; when enough people can believe an election was 'stolen' from the candidate who most people clearly didn't vote for, and then be marshalled and motivated to storm the seat of govt looking for blood; and when alt-facts, lies, conspiracy theories, and wish-fulfilment fantasies are championed as copper-bottomed truths and amplified across society - from workplaces to pulpits, social media channels like Prager and Project Veritas to Murdoch's many many outlets etc - perhaps those of us who the Right have already placed on the 'wrong' side of the fence have already lost control of the plot.

What if it turns out we're not just on the wrong side of the fence now, but on the wrong side of history too?

Well, if "we" lose, we will be on the wrong side of history as that is written by the winners.

Perhaps our political dysfunction is an ongoing struggle, if the examples of past civilizations falling from within apply. I sometimes speculate that the conflict may be older than humanity - that earlier hominid societies had a rivalry between the hunters and the witch doctors of which we may never know, but are the inheritors.

I suppose that's a question we should put to Cunt's good friends Bret and Heather, since hearing it on their podcast is probably the only way our friend will deem the notion worthy of discussion. Consider that his recent reply, paraphrased uncharitably, is "that's interesting, now let's talk about what I want to talk about" followed by the insinuations you've already noted.

That and incessant straw-manning seem to be a symptom of our corrupted dialog these days on so many topics, and as you point out, insecurity appears to underlie much of it. We've always had an element of this, but the internet as made it much more prevalent.

So what do we do? Could we address the behavior instead of the cause and reject the false assertion that doing so infringes on the freedom of speech?

If you look at the twin cesspools of toxic discourse, Facebook and Twitter, their owners are trying to sell the idea that they are, on the one hand, merely a platform and not responsible for the content they enable. On the other hand though, they sell advertising and profit from exploiting that content. The combination of unaccountability and profitability made them unwilling to enforce their rules of conduct when President Trump flagrantly broke them.

It's an interesting counterfactual to wonder how much different the last several years would have been if they had.

That observation leads me to wonder if the power of these platforms should be checked by some outside agency, but I don't see how that can be done. A government could nationalize them, but they are global entities and can evade a single country's laws. Plus, they are fabulously rich and can resist those laws with a decent chance of prevailing, and simultaneously lobby for their repeal. Do you have any ideas?

I'm left with pseudo-evolutionary musings. Do societies evolve similarly to the social animals that make them up? Will we, though trial an error, work something out that allows reasonably free discourse, but effectively mitigates the disruptive influence of trolls and other online vermin?

[Cunt]

For me, if the tech platforms are banning Trump, select 'medical disinformation', stories of major players in non-profits buying giant homes, or such, it makes me see them as political entities first.

If they all line up to paint, say, Project Veritas as 'publisher of deceptively-edited videos', I consider how deceptively they edit their videos.

There have been some pretty huge media lies pushed. The big ones have all been caught with their pants down.

But Joe, you take your effort to discredit PV, yet don't seem to comment on what they revealed.

That's ok, since you were told they were sketchy, but it kind of looks like seeing only one side of their story. The side of corporate giant CNN.