How CNN's Jeff Zucker and His Cronies Manipulated the News
rollingstone.com
rollingstone.com
Journalists, almost entirely as a group, are experts in nothing. Colossaly ill informed on every subject, and "research" consists of scrolling through Twitter to find a point of view that backs up their preexisting predudices. These days, many struggle with even basic English and grammar.
I'm not even giving them the credit of indulging in propaganda, because that requires some actual critical thought and intelligence. They're just bad at their job.
News outlets have incentives to create clickbait (or to favor stories that otherwise align with the motivations of their financial stakeholders), and "access reporters" have incentives to cozy up to their subjects.
But there are many, many journalists out there doing the actual work of researching subjects in depth and reporting on them to the best of their capability.
This story we're discussing right now - which exposes the corruption at CNN - wasn't generated by some layabout scrolling through their twitter timeline.
Someone would write an article bashing some group of other. Group would gets pissed. We meet with group. Guys in charge won’t talk about past. Only about moving forward.
Rinse and repeat. Higher ups only lived in the moment.
What strikes me is the gall and brazen dishonesty in American “news” media. Billionaire Russians are “oligarchs” and painted as Russia’s .1% who influence or control the country. And don’t forget about Russia’s “state-run media”, who surely we should never trust.
Meanwhile, America’s media itself is controlled by wealthy private interests - the same ones that influence minds and shape political outcomes. They’ve done immeasurable damage insofar as dividing this country, turning even families against one another over politics.
What’s especially striking is how much American media interests want to glue eyeballs and sell the Ukraine conflict. It’s no doubt a horrible, horrible disaster for the Ukrainian people. But the powers that be have decided to go next level in humanizing the conflict. We’re shown footage of blue eyes white people escaping bombs, often carrying their cats and dogs. We’re even given names of individuals murdered by the Russian bombing.
Where has all this coverage been in all of Americas own war, often bombing brown people everywhere from the Middle East to South East Asia?
The propaganda is on overdrive. Yesterday, I saw a CNN segment where they kept parroting Biden’s pitch that Putin is responsible for Americas inflation.
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King: "It's crazy - [CNN owner] Ted Turner changed the world. He's a a big fan of yours.
Clinton: Is he?
King: He would, uh, serve you. You know what I mean?
Clinton: You're kidding?
King: Oh you'd be surprised. He's ready, what's he got left in life to gain? I'd call him after you're elected. Think about it. No dope.
Clinton: That's for sure.
King: Great guy to work for too.
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I have no clue what King was suggesting. Clinton seemed literally less than interested, or at least more cautious about saying things you don't want heard around mics. But I also don't think it's likely that Larry was just randomly mouthing off, so it does make this quite relevant. As does the fact that it wasn't especially long after this, relatively speaking at least, that news started its rapid transition to what it's turned into now a days.
And if you really must get CNN's take on things, https://lite.cnn.com/en is much better than their cable channel. No filler, rambling talking heads, flashy hypnotic animations and music, or commercial breaks.
True. Old complaint. TV news has always been a parasite on newspaper news rooms. With some rare exceptions.
I did student broadcasting (radio, public access cable, job shadowing) in the 80s. Learned about the history, the players, "journalism", etc. I loved the gear, working in the studio. (At least as much as I love programming computers.)
Corporate media has always been as bad as everyone imagines. Completely walked away from the industry after some interning. Once I got a peek behind the curtain, I simply loathe the entirety of it. I even refuse to own a TV, watch the news, etc.
Edit: I work for a competitor to Nexstar who overall does very good work but I wouldn't recommend to avoid a conflict of interest.
The only thing free about our press anymore is that they’re free to make money using whatever hyper optimized feedback loop gives the best profit margin.
I no longer call it a free press, but instead a profit press.
I reserve the term “free press” for news organizations that in practice or legal constitution are non profit.
When it comes to low-quality journalism today, I notice that most (if not all) of the notorious cases follow a pattern where the shttier the news the cheaper it is. Could it be that journalistic quality is proportional to the costs the reader has to pay?
If so, rather than seeking a news source untainted by monetary interests, wouldn't it be more productive to seek costly news sources with individual interests you are clearly aware of?
I’m not looking for “free as in beer” press. Journalism takes effort that is real and should be remunerated. Without that, all you get is people who have an incentive to broadcast their version of the truth based on some other feedback that usually boils down to propaganda/proselyting/evangelism.
What I’m looking for is to have the profit motive detached from the news. I was intrigued when Jon Huntsman bought the Salt Like Tribune and changed it to a non profit organization a couple of years ago. I’m not a regular reader of the Trib, since I live up in Washington state these days, so I don’t know if it’s made a real difference. I read the occasional article from it, and it seems less click baity and sensationalistic, but I couldn’t say that with any depth.
But I do think there is an irreconcilable conflict of interest when you want to publicize information AND make a profit from it. It’s been there for a long time, but the precision of analytics feedback has moved that conflict up a whole notch in the digital age.
https://www.thewrap.com/cnns-don-lemon-asks-black-hole-could...
Is it a stupid and ignorant question, yea. Did someone in the audience find it interesting, extremely likely.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of..._(TV_series)
But I suppose there’s more money in that. What could go wrong with that attitude?
https://www.mediaite.com/online/rolling-stone-blasted-over-f...
>Rolling Stone has come under fire for sharing a dubious story about rural hospitals in Oklahoma being overwhelmed by those taking the veterinary medicine ivermectin to treat Covid-19 – an unproven treatment.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/rolling-stones-iv...
>If you want to know why Republicans have no faith in news organizations, look no further than the Rolling Stone story shared liberally across Twitter this weekend claiming that Oklahoma hospitals were turning away gunshot victims because they were overwhelmed by “horse dewormer overdoses.”
>Headlined “Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says,” the Rolling Stone story, written by Peter Wade, quoted a Dr. Jason McElyea who claimed, “The ERs are so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting to facilities where they can get definitive care and be treated.”
The media is garbage, pure and simple.
Democrat educators tried to introduce racial quotas to increase the number of non Asian students and the national media called any resistance to those quotas white supremacy
This became a whole controversy and then the pandemic took place and parents started to realize these racist ideas were also being taught in the curricula, and the Democrat candidate committed political seppuku by telling parents they had no right to decide what the curriculum is
That's why Glenn Youngkin is governor
That's a problem with any causehead. Even where you're winning, you have to be fighting something to stay relevant.
I think it's because CNN is supposed to be dialing more towards 'center' in an effort to pump up dismal ratings. Maybe Rolling Stone is 'punishing' them for the betrayal.
P.S. Could ESPN/ABC/NBC/PBS/etc be far behind?
Really shameful what they did - from turning into a political mouthpiece, to finding new ways to heighten the temperature in society and divide people into ever more atomised units, CNN in recent history has been an absolute stain on society. The liars they have hired to stare into the camera day after day, solemnly declaring what is and is not "good" for you, while completing ignoring the issues that affect regular working-class people, are the true sociopaths to keep doing this daily without any self-reflection.
Sad to watch. MSNBC is similar (trying to copy Fox's model, of being highly partisan and very exaggerating everything)
One can only speculate about how he landed the position, but none of it seems to be based on observable successes at what he was paid to do.
Their credibility allowed them to be carried into very dark territory and they took me with them. Once the cracks started to show through I started looking into other sources and slowly became totally disillusioned.
They are a political mouthpiece more than a news organization. They sowed so much division in the country and created false narratives at the beck and call of their political benefactors. The Russia-gate scandal was a total fabrication that they reported on long after the facts and government investigations showed it was all bullshit and continued to spread misinformation and strife among the citizenry.
They don't inform their viewers, they weaponize them.
Just the same as Fox, just the same as OAN, just the same as RT, just the same as MSNBC, just the same as ...
CNN is just a symptom of a much larger problem and it's that much larger problem which needs to be addressed -which will continue until it is addressed.
They are all garbage and you can't believe what they write, though they may be useful sources.
The polarization and desperate rating grabs are merely a death throw of an industry that has lost relevance.
Just check the AP & Reuters feeds each day. You'll get straight news, and you'll also save a lot of time.
It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than current events.
EDIT: replaced left and right with democrat/republican.
I don't think this article draws a picture of a news org that will do anything to defend their party, but rather a news org that will do anything for power. Which it then uses to reward the loyalists. It will gladly play into trump if he gives good ratings, just like it will happily shit on trump if there's ratings in that. It'll create conflicts of interest when it asks a journalist to interview his own brother, as long as there's ratings in it. It'll even cover for sexual misconduct, if the abusers are loyal and produce ratings.
Basically, there's no political party in this story. Only power hungry amoral people.
You can also find the limits on information through polling. Over half of fox News viewers believe that the US government found WMDs in Iraq in 2003. Over half of Democrats believe Russians hacked vote tallies and compromised voting machines in 2016
Nurses with “see you next week” signs during Trump ralleys and then one week later full 100% support for rallying. Just ad long as the cause is considered politically correct.
There was an article ( oped ) in Nature magazine on these protests that claimef the only covid spread that happening during BLM protests was because some people brought their unmasked children.
Nature magazine wrote that.
Ill try to dig up a link I personally feel it is healthy to have your eyes opened to your own political sides hypocracy.
I will never trust journalists again.
Contrast that with what I asked for, claims as deranged as what QAnon put forth. Are you telling me that you think that what you mentioned is on par with stories about a cabal of satanic cannibal pedophiles secretly controlling the entire US government, with Trump being the only one in power fighting back (also in silence, by the way)?
I’m just going to feed this quote back to you. I doubt we will be able to reconcile our respective understandings of this in short order because they’re so far apart, but suffice it to say I believe yours is much further from reality than mine.
To be clear, I never said I believed Trump took actual orders from Putin directly. Did he try to illegally cooperate with and got manipulated by him and his cronies? Yes, that I believe, even though I haven’t seen enough evidence to put it beyond a reasonable doubt (potentially because of the aforementioned obstruction of justice).
I always wonder how much that is a result of Trumps non-stop tweeting about it
> Over half of Democrats believe Russians hacked vote tallies and compromised voting machines in 2016
source?
Mind you this is all coming from “respected” and “establishment-accepted” news organizations to boot.
It's clear the American left establishment went apeshit and lost their rationality when that orange guy was elected. They may have been mostly emotional and hiding it behind virtue signaling before, not sure as I didn't pay that much attention to American politics. But after orange guy got in omg their biased agendas were just so incredibly obvious to anyone objectively looking from outside, and their constant 'trumping up' anything was so ridiculous it was pathetic. Pot meet kettle of what they accused other side of, but honestly they looked worse.
They were created (and everyone knows) to report from a "point of view" of the right.
The "left wing" media pretend to be the only real/factual news/journalism, but can be just as biased and partisan, if not worse.
In court. When their anchors get sued for slander.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/568213-oan-loses-appeal-i...
but probably untrue since it was allowed on mainstream media. Anything that really threatens the narrative will be banned outright or at mission critical times, like this documentary removed from youtube after being available for 6 years:
I didn't say CNN is neutral, I don't believe that. Nor have I assumed you like Fox News, I didn't insinuate anything of the sort. All I'm saying is Fox News does not wear what they are on their sleeve; they purport to be "fair and balanced" which is plainly a lie.
see r/politics
I remember the Trump election cycle when they kept coming up with "the beginning of the end" for Trump by mis-reporting what he said in rallies, debates, speeches... only to find out that the supporters kept growing... because turns out, considerable number of people actually looked for the source video (out of curiosity than suspicion, I imagine) and found that the media were either manipulating the videos or clipping out the context to misrepresent what he was talking about.
They have always been doing this but the masses didn't have access to the source material so they could report anything and get away with it. What has changed is that a lots of people can now see things for themselves (lots of people still choose not to, but I think it is out of habit than anything). The post-internet media has to take this into consideration and only lie about things that is difficult to document in video. Had they considered this during the campaign, "news" like "Russiagate" would have been much more effective.
People figured out that the media is lying by checking the source.
Media become worse and worse over time.
nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. the real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
general facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will &c &c. but no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. he who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1807 [1]
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His words may correspond to your own, but the fact that such views were generally widespread contradicts them. I think what has happened is modern times is not that the media becoming worse than ever, but rather that for some very brief window in time we actually had a media with integrity and ethics, even if completely serendipitously. So all we're doing is, seemingly like many things in modern society, is simply returning to how things were for nearly all of society's existence.
[1] - https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5...
I would like to request you to entertain the possibility that the media became so powerful and influencial for a brief period that they convinced everyone of that idea... the information revolution just helped break the facade by democratising access to information... because of which their model of story-telling which was based on large uninformed masses (or masses homogenously disinformed with biased story-telling) no longer worked.
And that led to a high stakes confrontation with the paper itself facing government pressure and lawsuits that went all the way to the Supreme Court with what would have been devastating consequences had they lost. Of course by 2013 when the Snowden leaks hit this had all changed. The NYTimes had already long since turned into the sort of agency that chose to more regularly run with headlines like "British Intelligence Chiefs Say Leaks by Snowden Hurt Security", "Leaker's Flight Raises Tension", and such other tripe - frequently engaging in a mixture of ignoring, misrepresenting, or defending what Snowden had revealed.
But the in the heyday of media, I do not see any reason to believe that people's judgement of the media was flawed. I'm certainly interested to see why you think so though!