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mrfusion

If you’re interested here are some highlights from my journey to 0% trust in the media:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hWLjYJ4BzvI&feature=youtu.be

https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HPM70d_jT9k

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/11783

I’d be curious to hear yours.

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I was once interviewed about my thoughts on a candidate during a presidential primary. Without giving away too much detail, I mentioned that I was unenthusiastic about the candidate and didn't understand his sudden surge in popularity. I threw in a sentence about wanting to vote for someone I actually felt was authentic and trustworthy.

The reporter used my "I want someone trustworthy" quote (without the context) and in such a way to imply I saw something in the candidate, when in reality, I was explaining that I didn't trust him as far as I could throw him. She just tossed my line in the article right after mentioning good things about the candidate. Totally and utterly misleading.

Pretty direct and eye opening to me. That reporter went out with a story in mind and used my words however she saw fit.

Wow. That's all kinds of gross and shady.

For me it's that whenever the media report on a subject I have expertise in, I can immediately see how much of what's reported is total bs.

1. 2007 a couple of paramedics were accused of racism to make a news story. Both suffered severe consequences and were later vindicated. Media watchdogs did next to nothing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramedics_incident_in_Oslo_...

2. 2014 State run broadcaster claim Israeli soldiers "shoot at everything that moves".

3. 2018, 2019 and 2020 close friends of me were targeted first by a large business newspaper, then by the second biggest broadcaster, then by the largest broadcaster.

None of them had anything to back it up except spooky music, interviews with people who disliked them, medias own admissions that they don't understand international finance etc.

Meanwhile police had run undercover and official investigations based on the same sources and shut the case not because of the usual lack of resources or because they couldn't prove it but because there wasn't anything wrong.

The video in that third link is stuffed full of so many moronic statements that it’s almost impressive.

I really turned a corner when I read Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" and Zinn's "People's History of the United States".

Zinn's book, and his methods have many detractors [1], [2], [3]

Have you read any of the criticisms of the book now that the historical record is much more complete around some of his claims?

While Zinn makes for entertaining reading, history is savaging much of it. I enjoyed reading it, but the more I read of contemporary sources, the more I became convinced that Zinn was giving us a very selective story without the vital nuance.

[1] https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-histor...

[2] https://newrepublic.com/article/112574/howard-zinns-influent...

[3] https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/book-review-debunking-...

What're your thoughts on, say, the BBC and CBC?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuO6yJrRAYw

https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/07/can-physics-be-too...

https://hongkongfp.com/2020/03/29/video-top-doctor-bruce-ayl...

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-jeffrey-ep...

https://fantasticanachronism.com/2021/01/11/are-experts-real...

Wonder if that evidence, potentially implicating the rich and powerful, will ever come to light...

I'm still amazed at what they don't cover, and even suppress.

The disparity of coverage between such as the largest antiwar protests in history, institutional imperial torture, the Occupy movement, or bank bailouts; compared to pop-stars or sports, is soul-rocking.

Many otherwise smart people seem to accept this. They see it as normal, inevitable, and even victim blame saying that the media are "just giving people what they want".

I disagree - polls all say people want healthcare, they want Bush and Cheney held for war crimes, they want clean water and a healthy planet. People want better education and childcare and mental health support. And those otherwise smart people agree with me, then go right back to turning on the bullshit; proudly voting for the lesser but still abominable evil.

A great demonstration of the power of selecting which stories to cover is in Democracy Now versus nearly everything else. A DN listener hears about tons of labor action and protests that don't make it to other news sources (or, if they do at all, are waaaaay down in a tiny column near the end), so would have a very different idea about e.g. how active (and, perhaps, how useful) labor unions are, while someone with other sources may only hear about one or two major protests and one or two major strikes per year. DN also keeps up with coverage of protests in particular, where other outlets mention them only infrequently, such that a consumer of the latter might think they fizzle out or fail much sooner than they actually do.

I dunno which is more "accurate" or "true", but it's a great example of how deciding what counts as noteworthy news is itself a very powerful editorial force. Where other outlets (even NPR and such) are setting aside news-coverage time to promote blockbuster films(!), the DN version of that would be promoting a documentary about indigenous-peoples issues or climate change or something. Totally different view of the world, just because of what the outlet deems worth covering.

> polls all say people want ... Bush and Cheney held for war crimes

I'm calling BS on that one. You might be able to find a poll that says that, but no, polls don't all say that. You need to look at a wider selection of polls.

I'll give you that one, I ought have phrased that better.

Maybe something like, every poll outside of America and maybe one or two other countries that have benefited greatly from those wars since 2001.

I would like to believe that if Americans were actually informed, by a media that worked on their behalf, they'd nearly universally want to prosecute Bush and Cheney as well. How sad, if I'm wrong on that.

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