media

inquirer.com
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent recently reported on a poll of 1,200 voters deemed gettable for Biden in three swing states, including Pennsylvania, and found the vast majority didn’t know about Trump’s “dictator for a day” comments, or that he’d echoed Adolf Hitler in calling enemies “vermin” and claiming migrants are “poisoning the blood” of America. The pollster said only 31% of persuadable voters had heard much about these statements.
This is the media functioning as its owners want: smoothing the way for autocracy in America so they can optimize profits.
Salon.com
At a rally on Saturday night in Virginia, Trump confused Barack Obama, who left office seven years ago, with President Biden for the third time over the last six months. “Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word,” Trump said, as his crowd of rabid supporters suddenly fell silent…You won’t find that verbal stumble and the crowd’s stunned reaction in the Times coverage of the campaign over the weekend.
So strange that everyone at the NYT is working on this project to normalize Trump. Shouldn’t there be high profile resignations or some indication of unease from professional journalists?
Flaming Hydra
I mean, yeah, I don't know why nobody else picked up on that, because the big detail that got my attention was that she says that the trafficking had started when this woman was 12, and well, then that can't—Joe Biden's only been president for three years, so he can't—it made no sense.
A good interview with the journalist who broke the SOTU rebuttal trafficking lie on TikTok.
Wayback Machine
If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever.
This article really is as good as everyone is saying. Read it on the Internet Archive while you still can. Why it was removed we'll probably never know. cough unhappy rich people cough
Tech Policy Press
Based on the measures developed for the study, the researchers find that in aggregate, after one year online attention towards a deplatformed personality is reduced by 64% on Google and by 43% on Wikipedia.
Deplatforming is an important tool that we shouldn’t throw out as useless.
New York Times
The decline in crime contrasts with perceptions, driven in part by social media videos of flash-mob-style shoplifting incidents, that urban downtowns are out of control. While figures in some categories of crime are still higher than they were before the pandemic, crime overall is falling nationwide, including in cities often singled out by politicians as plagued by danger and violence.
Questions not covered here: who does rising crime stories serve? Why is the media more eager to report rising crime compared with declining crime?
Finding Gravity
I can already hear the objections from the Times and its defenders: It’s not our job to make people care about things. Nonsense. Of course the news media plays a central role in determining what people think about. The choices they make about what topics to cover and how much to cover them send a clear signal to the American people about what is important; what is worth thinking about.
Based on the number of mentions, a single poll a year before an election is the most important thing to think about. The consequences of encouraging political violence, not as much.
FrameLab
Repetition is the most important element of communications, but you don’t hear President Biden hammering the theme of freedom, making it clear how close we are to the precipice of authoritarianism and spelling out what that will mean. As a result, many voters seem largely unaware that fundamental American freedoms are at stake.
Great article about why freedom is a much better message for democrats than the economy.
Wonkette
But yet the pundits have already pivoted from “Joe Biden is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!” to “The Democrats just shockingly [not shockingly if you understand anything about America right now — Ed.] had yet another great election night, and for that Joe Biden should feel bad, because according to polls, which are the same as elections [No — Ed.], he is terrible and unpopular and should be ashamed of himself!”
Cathartic rant about media Trump thirst.
The Present Age
In a just world, publishing such confidently incorrect pieces in an actual newspaper would result in the author’s career in opinion journalism coming to an end soon after. This is not a just world. The Post, a real newspaper that people read to learn about the important issues of the day, doesn’t seem to care if their columnists know what they’re talking about.
Trolling the libs for clicks is one way the media makes money. Making money is a higher priority than accuracy.
presswatchers.org
When, for instance, he accuses public officials and the media of treason punishable by death, reporters should categorically state that what he is doing is classically authoritarian behavior. Then they should ask Republican leaders and Trump supporters to say whether or not they agree with him and why. And reporters should do that every time Trump says something alarming.
If the media is going to do horse race coverage only anyway, at least they could provide some context and report on the consequences of all this base baiting.
The Soapbox
It’s very important that people understand this: We reside in a media environment that promotes—whether it intends to or not—right-wing authoritarian spectacle.
Current media coverage relies on the idea that both parties want a functioning democratic government. That has changed and this premise is giving cover to Republicans.
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