Multiple local news stations say the same thing verbatim

This article does a good job of drawing parallels between the book and reality in a short amount of time. I feel like the article is just scratching the surface though. > Television was transforming the news into a rapid and proliferating series of images, a form of entertainment that prized ‘the unreal’ and the ‘more or less totally irrelevant’. You can contest facts, he said, but not images. Noam Chomsky has some excellent work in this area. It can be very very dry reading, but very informative. Check out manufacturing consent link In the same vein and much more entertaining is this video that compares local news channels: ▶ this video

I find the opposite to be the case. The large news orgs with all the paywalls are now mostly used to push a narrative. This has been the case for years, best demonstrated by this clip: ▶ this video The free internet still exists, and is not paywalled.

I find it interesting that last week, we had a nationwide AT&T outage and one of the causes speculated on local news outlets (within a couple hours) was a solar flare [1]. Now, less than a week later, we have articles in the New Yorker priming thoughts about solar storms. Why is this relevant? Consider where that speculation started: local news networks [2]. It's worth reading Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars [3] if you haven't already to understand why it's worth me mentioning this. Easily dismissed as "conspiracy nonsense," but it's worth asking "why this, why now?" [1] link [2] ▶ this video [3] link

> Most people are more interested in accuracy, context, analysis, and trustworthiness. Lol imagine thinking you get this from big monopoly news media almost all of which are owned by private equity media conglomerates. ▶ this video

This was great thanks... Also there's this [1], which just boggles my mind. I can't make sense of this level of centralized message control and dissemination. It's straight out of 1984. It's hard to believe "the media" (whoever "they" are) has an agenda... it's tinfoil hat stuff.. Usually I write it off as emergent behavior of collective groups of humans trying to make $$$ from clicks, standard selfish behavior + time, leading to a race towards the bottom that looks like this. But watching those clip segments it's pretty clear there's a story/narrative being pitched by someone with the leverage to do so. Is this propaganda? What is propaganda? How can I recognize it? Is everything propaganda? Is "the media" captured and is now just a tool of whatever "system" is controlling things. This is the kind of stuff Jean Baudrillard was writing about. Sometimes we get journalism other times we get whatever that this stuff is. I don't have a problem with journalists sticking to the facts, SBF hasn't been charged, so lets not lynch him just yet. But hopefully he's being investigated (they usually don't announce when they are investigating someone, as it puts them on notice). Overall I think this is a direct result the 1996 Telecommunications Act which eliminated the rules on the number of radio stations a company could own (which also was one of the most lobbied bills in history). In hindsight this was a big mistake, and set things up for the kind of centralized messaging we see. There

"One would have to assume that there was also a direct line to other social medial platforms. " I would say its not a huge leap to think that. I would even say its more than just other social media platforms. I would say it goes into main stream media on BOTH sides, Hollywood, sports, etc including global corporations. ▶ this video

Main problem with brexit was bubble. Even now, after so many years, you're saying that it's manipulation, simply because you don't personally know people who wanted it to happen. Who exist, I assure you. > What I mean is – well, take creationists. According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country. > And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. Odds of this happening by chance? 1/2^150 = 1/10^45 = approximately the chance of picking a particular atom if you are randomly selecting among all the atoms on Earth. source: link ------- This being said, guarding my gps history like it's treasure does absolutely zilch to stop political manipulation, when you have stuff like corporate control over mainstream media and PR firms. See NYT's coverage of FTX, for a contemporary example. Or, well... ▶ this video

I don't think people are dumb though. Most working class people see through the BS because they live it everyday. I'm not talking about just us, I'm talking retail, waiters, miners, etc. They've seen way more shit with their bosses and life experiences to know what's what. I don't think it's infantilizing. I think since these major news sites are owned and backed by the rich, they have certain messages they want to push. And one idea they don't want people to know about is worker organization. The rich all have a vested interest to not mention it at all and instead want us to use their rigged process to resolve issues. Here's an interesting video that shows every news station saying the exact same thing: ▶ this video

This might be true except for the fact that news outlets follow a script to push a narrative (and CNN is not exempted from this): ▶ this video

Examples for what happens when media ownership is concentrated: ▶ this video And this one I'm not sure if it's just good PR by Amazon or laziness by media outlets or both: link

75% of those who identify as being on the right thought coverage of their views is unfair. This is interesting given how many local news outlets are owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group. I guess it doesn't help when they run segments like this, sowing more distrust: ▶ this video

And there's the rub. What is "quality investigative reporting" in an objective sense, when most of the MSM outlets are owned by oligarchs, or simply "toe the line"? In theory I would gladly support the theory of "quality investigative reporting", but the reality is a propagandist machine where opinion pieces replaces actual unbiased, adjective-free objective news. Some examples of "oligarch news": link ▶ this video As a former developer who worked closely on Thomson Reuters News feed (in the 00's), I've seen how there is almost zero fact checking for the information that appears on news feeds. Instead, news outlets trust the 'upstream' feeds and then quote the reports verbatim. To be fair, there are those who are really awesome at doing research and releasing information that are part of the MSM. Unfortunately, there are plenty others who are not affiliated with MSM news outlets and hence aren't regarded as "reporters" per-se. These latter ones are regularly attacked via "fact checking" websites as a way to discredit them. An article on the latter is here: link In short, there's a bunch of information out there and without each and every news report clearly citing original sources, then MSM or not, it must be regarded as suspect. So for "quality investigative reporting", the actual reports must rigorously cite objective sources.