The Gymnastics many “News” Providers Do with Verifiable Facts

Journalism is not merely about providing the facts. There are so many ways to manipulate, censor and palter even though one is using verifiable facts. This is an excellent post by Michael Nayna:

There are three information filters that allow journalists to bend reality using verifiable facts.

#1 – Story selection. Each day offers thousands of stories, and editors typically highlight those that align with an ideological perspective. Politically inconvenient events can be ignored or buried with minimal coverage.

#2 – Fact selection within stories. The amount of details within a particular event is massive, and a journalist needs to choose which ones are relevant. I once worked with a journalist who had been covering a series of attacks on Indian students on public transport. The outlet’s interest was in the racial angle, but an interviewee mentioned other victims. She asked about their nationality, then chose not to pursue those attacks in detail because the victims were Australian. A single vague line made the final cut, and the piece implied racial motive when it couldn’t have been.

#3 – Framing facts with emotive conjugation. For instance, if I’m covering someone I don’t like, he’s cheap; if I’m neutral, he’s frugal; if I like him, he’s thrifty. Someone can be passionate, emotional, or hysterical; careful, hesitant, or cowardly; they can glisten, perspire, or sweat. This is subtle, but once you notice it, you’ll find that even though there’s better and worse news, none of it is purely objective.

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Jeffrey Tucker Describes the Bleak State of the World

Jeffrey Tucker has ambitiously taken the temperature of the political, economic and social world with an article titled: "The Coup, the Calamity, and the Conspiracy." I highly recommend a full read.

Tucker begins with this graphic:

Here is an excerpt:

[Y]ou could be more realistic and see that this was not a mistake at all. It was entirely intentional, the unfolding of a dark scheme hatched by an indescribably sadistic ruling class. Indeed, if this had all been an accident, we surely would have heard someone apologize by now.

There is also the planning involved. There was Event 201, the lesser-known Crimson Contagion, and many others. They are usually described in the mainstream press as rehearsals for unplanned contingencies, like resiliency training. Absurd. This was plotted far in advance. We have all the receipts. To realize this and connect the dots does not make you a conspiracy theorist. It makes you a person with the capacity to think.

To deny nefarious motives and schemes makes you impossibly naive to the point of sedation. At best, it makes you ill-read in history.

After five years, what can we say was the plan and purpose of this calamity? We all have our views. Certainly within Brownstone ranks, there are many opinions. We argue among ourselves all the time. Coming up with a clean and clear explanation is not easy because there are so many moving parts and so many industrial opportunists who took advantage of the crisis to cash out.

This is such an expansive article that resonated with me over and over.

I have many of the same concerns, but I won't say much here. I will say (as Tucker mentions in the early paragraphs) that I'm sure how well coordinated all of the powerful players are. Just because they are well-entrenched, monied and politically connected doesn't mean that they necessarily agree with each other day to day, much less year to year. But in my mind, there is definitely a hell of a lot of coordination.

The best solution to this horrific anti-Democratic mess is a vigorous, courageous and free press, but the powers-that-be know this deeply and they've got the formerly half-respectable "journalism" industry 95% locked down.

So in the meantime, it's Jeffrey Tucker, independent media and people like you and me doing what we can. It feels like a David and Goliath battle, especially when you see Trump kowtowing to Pfizer, just like Biden did and harris would have

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Youtube Falls on the Sword. Admits Biden WH Coerced Censorship

Youtube announcement today will be of special interest to those who keep insisting that the Biden WH did not engage in censorship. Youtube has agreed to invite ALL creators who previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to Youtube. This is a major reversal of a reprehensible policy that silenced many important voices since 2020.

Youtube:

-Admitted that the Biden Admin censorship pressure was “unacceptable and wrong”

-Confirms that the Biden Admin wanted Americans censored for speech that did not violate YouTube’s policies

-Details when YouTube began rolling back its censorship policies on political speech: after @JudiciaryGOP began its investigation

-States that public debate should NEVER come at the expense of relying on “authorities” -Promises to NEVER use third-party “fact-checkers”

-Warns that Europe’s censorship laws target AMERICAN companies and threaten AMERICAN speech.

You can read Youtube's announcement for yourself at the link.

Michael Shellenberger adds:

Finally! Google admits 1) that the Biden White House demanded censorship of legal content, and 2) that the European censorship law (DSA) could require it and other tech companies "to remove lawful content" both "within and outside of" the EU. The US must stand up to EU censors! Had the above letter from Google, and the below letter from Meta, been sent before the Supreme Court received filings on Missouri v. Biden, the ruling may have gone the other way, as they demonstrate direct White House bullying of tech firms to censor legal content.

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Nicolas Hulscher Discusses the Journal Cartel

Is there a journal cartel? Nicolas Hulscher says yes and claims it is rife with corruption in this post on X:

The Fall of the Journal Cartel

Most of the major publishers, including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Sage Publications and Taylor & Francis, have formed a cartel under the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers.

The Cartel controls two-thirds of global journal publications, controls the narrative, enforces unpaid peer reviews, restricts manuscript submissions, and delays scientific progress—all to protect their multi-billion-dollar profits. This resulted in a recent class action lawsuit against the Cartel for “tremendous damage to science and the public interest.”

Nearly half of medical journal editors have financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies. Moreover, 59% of peer-reviewers for major medical journals received more than $1 billion from drug companies from 2020 to 2022.

The widespread corruption embedded within the nearly closed system of the Journal Cartel operates in a way that resembles a high-entropy state, as described by the second law of thermodynamics.

According to this principle, isolated systems naturally progress toward greater disorder, a state of entropy that ultimately becomes unsustainable and leads to system collapse.

In the case of the academic publishing industry, the compounded effects of internal corruption, lack of transparency, unethical censorship, and growing public awareness act as catalysts, pushing the system toward inevitable instability. Consequently, unless radical structural reforms are introduced, the Journal Cartel will face eventual collapse under the weight of its own entropy.

The Cartel’s unsustainable global monopoly on science will fall in due time, in accordance with natural laws. Until then, we can and will continue to battle against them and publish with journals outside the Cartel’s influence in our best attempt to advance scientific knowledge and protect public health.

Truth always prevails in the end.

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