Media Bias

[rainbow]

Who took the time to parrot the 'russian disinformation' line from the 50 former intelligence officials? (who didn't quite lie...)

Is that a trick question?
If you know, tell us.

[Cunt]

I think everyone who accepted the lie shows a high level of credulity and compliance to authority.

But as to who 'parroted' those lies, well, that's up to each of we birds to decide for ourselves.

I mean, i could always go back to fall 2020 here, and see what you said about it, but I care more about my gullibility, than about yours.

[rasetsu]

I think everyone who accepted the lie shows a high level of credulity and compliance to authority.

But as to who 'parroted' those lies, well, that's up to each of we birds to decide for ourselves.

I see. So parroting left-wing lies is the problem. More vodka?

[Cunt]

I think everyone who accepted the lie shows a high level of credulity and compliance to authority.

But as to who 'parroted' those lies, well, that's up to each of we birds to decide for ourselves.

I see. So parroting left-wing lies is the problem. More vodka?

It can be a problem. If you caught yourself parroting left-wing lies, would you think it a problem?

If I had fallen for one or another of the 'Russia Bad' conspiracy theories, I would probably feel like vodka.

[Cunt]

I think everyone who accepted the lie shows a high level of credulity and compliance to authority.

But as to who 'parroted' those lies, well, that's up to each of we birds to decide for ourselves.

I see. So parroting left-wing lies is the problem. More vodka?

Here is someone who parroted those left-wing lies not long ago. Maybe he'll chime in to share his thoughts on being hoodwinked so amusingly...

Trump is still angry with Ukraine for not helping Rudy find Hunter's laptop.

...and Rudy is upset that nobody took the fake laptop seriously.

I was going to joke about the fact that Hunter is on video telling a whore that he lost three, and ask where to find the fake one, amongst all the real ones out there, but instead, I'll keep it serious.

Are you frustrated that you were tricked, rainbow? Or is it just fine, in the service of the US oligarchs?

[Joe]

... Of course, politicians, irresponsible media bloviators, and random folk on the internet will fill the silence with speculative conspiracy theories to make money, advance their careers, or just feel special. The rest of us will wait for something to actually happen before spending much time on it.

Indeed. Conspiracy theories exist as a causal bridge between apparently unconnected information. C follows B follows A, and the job of a good conspiracy theory is to find B, but where you only know A and C and already consider them significantly related.

The Bush family had dealings with a middle Eastern petrochemical investment fund (A) in which the Bin Laden family also had a financial interest (C). Bush was president when Bin Laden destroyed the twin towers, so there must be a causal link between the two (B).

In light of an assumption or a belief in the necessary relationship between A & C, and faced with the fact that nobody could actually find a direct causal link (B), the conspiracy theorist declares that that somebody, somewhere must be hiding that vital piece of information (B) that ties the two together. In fact, neither A nor C have to be true in the objective, factual sense, and B can literally be anything imaginable.

Unpicking Laptopgate(!) is difficult because it's several causal links deep, but I think the essence of it rests on accepting two main statements: (A) Hunter Biden's laptop contains some incriminating information, potentially criminal in nature, regarding his father and/or the family business, and (C) Joe Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States (for whatever reason is being given this week). Assuming a causal link between A & C grants the conspiracy theorist free reign to connect the two in any way imaginable, and the fact that (this week) the FBI are following due process stands as 'proof' that somebody, somewhere, is hiding that vital piece of info that would demonstrate, once and for all, that Biden's presidency is as illegitimate as the conspiracy theorists already assume.

Of course, the other feature of a good conspiracy theory is that it places the theorist at the centre of events, because it is only their formulation of a causal link between A & C which will ultimately validate their belief in the necessary causal relationship between A & C. The conspiracy theorist knows what they know, right(?) - they're just being denied the opportunity to prove it by some larger, more powerful, malignant force! And so the theorists are forced into what Hofstadter called "the paranoid leap into fantasy" in order to maintain the theory; as an article of faith in their own righteousness. In this regard, conspiracy theories are a form of of magical thinking of exactly the same kind that obliged people in times past to sacrifice their children to appease angry forest spirits.

Ah, true! I was thinking of the appeal of being at the center of events as one of the ways a conspiracy theorist might feel special. I imagine it has strong attraction for attention seekers as well. They don't even need to use their imagination, just parrot a particularly irritating CT to provoke a response.

Especially if they just ask questions.

Another thing I've noticed about conspiracy theories is that they require an opposing narrative, the official story. This is usually a distorted version of actual events, reporting, or government statements. The CT's generally seldom know the official accounts.

My favorite example is a story from Vincent Bugliosi, the author and former prosecutor. He once asked an audience of 600 lawyers for a show of hands for three questions. He asked how many believed there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy and got an overwhelming show of hands. Then he asked how many had seen a movie, read a book, or magazine article propounding a JFK conspiracy theory or rejecting the Warren Commission report and got another sea of hands. Then he asked how many had read the Warren Commission report and only a few hands went up, which led him to ask his audience how they could form an intelligent opinion if they only heard one side of the story.

And that's how it goes. 9/11 CT's don't read the 9/11 Commission report, 2020 election deniers don't read the audit reports, and so on. I'll have to remember to ask what the official story is for Laptopgate.

[Joe]

So, your suggestion is that the FBI is corruptly protecting wealthy people who have used Maxwell's services as a procurer.

Evidence?

The trafficking is not in question - she was arrested, convicted, about to be sentenced.

The Maxwell lady, I mean.

Who did she traffic kids to? Well, the FBI knows. Their protection of the wealthy customers of Maxwell may be incidental to other things, but I'm not going to pretend they don't know, or that they are above suspicion.

That would be nutty.

Hard not to fill the silence with speculative conspiracy theories, isn't it? It's all too human a trait, and an enjoyable exercise of our imagination as long as we don't take it too seriously.

Yes. It's much simpler to just point out that they know, without a doubt, who paid Maxwell for child sex trafficking.

They've known, without a doubt, that most of the media was lying about the Biden Laptop scandal.

Just like the news agencies knew they were lying. Or those '50 Former Intelligence Officials' were all lying.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5 ... e-russian/

But I bet their lies are so skillful, that even now, plenty of people will keep on believing. Might still think Biden deserved all those votes.

I wonder if he will still be the most popular president EVAR, now that all this has come out. Or what new lies the corporate news might tell about 'Russia, Russia, Russia'.

Now Cunt, don't be such a bastard. Like Hunter, Trump, Eastman, and that other twat, the principles of due process and the presumption of innocence protect those people too. I don't expect we'll heard anything until the DOJ files charges, and if they decide they don't have enough of a case, we won't hear anything.

It will probably be one of those "while this report does not conclude that <the suspect> committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" kind of things.

[Cunt]

I think the Warren Commission came out about the same time as the term 'conspiracy theory'.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?c ... 22%3B%2Cc0

[Joe]

That's what they want you to believe.

[L'Emmerdeur]

That's what they want you to believe.

I like that article, though had to pause over this sentence: 'The reason why so many people believe in the idea that the CIA invented the term “conspiracy theory” relates to the role of the Kennedy assassination in the larger history of the concept and their popularity.'

It inspired a dive into the relation of the term to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which in turn lead to revisiting Bakunin's antisemitism, and a narrative about the evolution of communism in the later 19th/early 20th century as it played out in various leftist periodicals in Germany. The internet.

In any case, my recollection is that 'conspiracy theory' had become more or less pejorative by the late 70s, which accords fairly well with what the article lays out.

[L'Emmerdeur]

Pay Fox News viewers to watch CNN, and they realize they've been getting a tailored picture of the world.

'The manifold effects of partisan media on viewers' beliefs and attitudes: A field experiment with Fox News viewers'

Abstract:

Partisan media impacts voting behavior, yet what changes in viewers’ beliefs or attitudes may underlie these impacts is poorly understood. We recruited a sample of regular Fox News viewers using data on actual TV viewership from a media company, and incentivized them to watch CNN instead for a month using real-time viewership quizzes. Despite regular Fox viewers being largely strong partisans, we found manifold effects of changing the slant of their media diets on their factual beliefs, attitudes, perceptions of issues’ importance, and overall political views. We show that these effects stem in part from a bias we call partisan coverage filtering, wherein partisan outlets selectively report information, leading viewers to learn a biased set of facts. Consistent with this, treated participants concluded that Fox concealed negative information about President Trump. Partisan media does not only present its side an electoral advantage—it may present a challenge for democratic accountability.

[pErvinalia]

No no, L'emmy, this thread is about left wing media bias.

[rainbow]

I think everyone who accepted the lie shows a high level of credulity and compliance to authority.

But as to who 'parroted' those lies, well, that's up to each of we birds to decide for ourselves.

I see. So parroting left-wing lies is the problem. More vodka?

Here is someone who parroted those left-wing lies not long ago. Maybe he'll chime in to share his thoughts on being hoodwinked so amusingly...

Trump is still angry with Ukraine for not helping Rudy find Hunter's laptop.

...and Rudy is upset that nobody took the fake laptop seriously.

I was going to joke about the fact that Hunter is on video telling a whore that he lost three, and ask where to find the fake one, amongst all the real ones out there, but instead, I'll keep it serious.

Are you frustrated that you were tricked, rainbow? Or is it just fine, in the service of the US oligarchs?

Not at all. Which of the three are you talking about, or one of the dozen clones produced by Russian Trolls?

[Sean Hayden]

How about a meta free media. I'm tired of hearing the media talk about itself so much as it delivers.

[Joe]

That's what they want you to believe.

I like that article, though had to pause over this sentence: 'The reason why so many people believe in the idea that the CIA invented the term “conspiracy theory” relates to the role of the Kennedy assassination in the larger history of the concept and their popularity.'

It inspired a dive into the relation of the term to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which in turn lead to revisiting Bakunin's antisemitism, and a narrative about the evolution of communism in the later 19th/early 20th century as it played out in various leftist periodicals in Germany. The internet.

In any case, my recollection is that 'conspiracy theory' had become more or less pejorative by the late 70s, which accords fairly well with what the article lays out.

Yeah, I saw that too and wondered if they really meant the term "conspiracy theorist." The Google book reference graph Cint linked to showed that term picking up around 1960, where the term "conspiracy theory" showed a low level blip in the late 1890's tapering off before World War I, and then growing use during and after the war.