Reporters Who Keep Us in the Dark so that They can be Popular with their Peers

Freddie DeBoer points out one of the biggest stories that is not being reported. It is a story that affects (and often corrupts) ALL the big stories. It appears that reporters think of themselves as being back in high school and it appears that their need to be seen as admirable by their peers affects whether they will ask serious questions or whether they will pursue a story at all.

DeBoer is an excellent writer and I subscribe to his Substack. This is a critically important story that is kryptonite to all of the "news" reporters out there with misplaced priorities--in other words, the many "news" reporters who would rather be popular than do the difficult job of being real journalist. Here's an excerpt.

In the fifteen years I’ve written for public consumption, this is the topic I’ve returned to most. I have argued that people who work in the media are in great majorities unduly concerned with being popular among their peers, and that this desire distorts our newsmedia and what it covers in destructive ways. I also believe that the most important site of this kind of social conditioning is Twitter. A corollary to this is that the industry, which will give the most trivial subjects immense amounts of coverage (like, say, the “Try Guys”) avoids talking about the powerful impact of the desire to be popular, a kind of within-industry omerta that prevents anyone from looking too closely at how the sausage gets made. I told this story my first year of writing, I’ve told it most every year since, and I’m telling it again now. Because nothing ever changes.

There are, of course, many people of both talent and integrity within the industry who do their best to avoid this social capture. Many of them are open-minded about who they read and what they’ll engage with. Indeed, the median writer is (unsurprisingly) more thoughtful and willing to challenge consensus than the crowd. But even the most independent of them tend to at least maintain the code of omerta, refusing to publicly question the in-crowd dynamics even if they won’t play into them with their own behavior. And I do get it; they have to live and work in that industry and coexist alongside the peers that they might be criticizing in aggregate. It would, though, make me feel slightly less crazy if more people would say, even occasionally, “people in the industry really want to be well-liked, and they change their public personas and their work to remain so.” What’s frustrating for me is that, while they may not share my level of disdain for this condition, many individual writers have privately conceded the broad contours of what I’m saying. But they don’t do so publicly. Like I said. Omerta.

Of course, the disciplinary action taken against people who speak the way I am is exactly what you’d expect: insiders accuse critics of insiderism of merely being jealous that they aren’t insiders themselves. It can’t be the case that someone like myself could genuinely, organically observe the ways in which media cliquishness distorts the practices of journalism and commentary and advocate for something better. Any such critics must necessarily merely want to be a part of the hierarchy they criticize, sour grapes. Again, it never changes.

What I never understand is why no enterprising media reporter doesn’t ever try to report this out. There are no industries where insiderism and patronage don’t impact the labor market to some degree, so why not try to explore that influence? How does the insiderism of elite media Twitter influence the industry and thus our national story?

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The Risk of Nuclear War is Skyrocketing and Few Seem to Notice

The Ukraine war began Feb 24, 2020. Based on the above estimates, in only 8 months, the risk of nuclear war has increased somewhere between 400% and 2500%. Shouldn't this threat of annihilation be on the headline of every newspaper every day? Shouldn't the cost-benefit analysis of U.S. involvement have been discussed in open hearings in Congress before the U.S. jacked up the risk that we will all die for a territorial dispute involving a country most Americans couldn't have located on a map one year ago?

Is the problem that I'm in my 60s and I remember the terror we all felt during the Cuban Missile crisis? Is it that we are now a generation hooked on video games and violent movies, such that things always work out in the end (or if not, we hit the reboot button or wait for the next episode)?

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FAIR Responds to AG Merrick Garland on Transgender Issues

I agree with the response by FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) to the recent letter sent by American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and Children’s Hospital Association to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Here is an excerpt from FAIR's letter:

The topic of best practices in gender-related healthcare is currently the subject of intense debate. In their October 3rd press release, the American Academy of Pediatrics cited a 2018 Policy Statement as the basis for evidence-based gender-affirming care. Now, in 2022, four years of experience has provided a growing body of evidence and patient experiences that do not support the safety and benefits of universal “gender affirming” care as medically established. Recent systematic reviews have concluded that gender affirming care to treat gender dysphoria for adolescence is based on low quality, experimental evidence; ignores underlying mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, autism, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse disorders, borderline personality disorder, and eating disorders; and may result in irreversible harm—including but not limited to developmental, neurocognitive, psychological, hormonal, and reproductive damage. The Tavistock Gender Clinic in the United Kingdom was recently closed due to these concerns. Moreover, under the gender affirming model, a large new cohort of patients (including the young) are being placed on a lifelong path of medications and dependencies with unknown consequences. It remains unclear whether such treatments will lead to heart disease, cancer, chronic pain, or other serious effects, and whether our healthcare system will be equipped to treat that growing population. Furthermore, a growing cohort of patients are detransitioning and reporting superficial assessments, poor follow-up care, and misdiagnosis of root causes for their gender dysphoria. The opioid epidemic itself was created by “one-size fits all” regulatory mandates to measure pain and treat with opioids, and a political partnership between the AMA and Purdue Pharma which disregarded scientific evidence about the dangers of opioids and prioritized subjective assessments of pain. That approach contributed to the opioid crisis we still grapple with today. Open inquiry and consideration of dissenting voices are imperative to avoid repeating a similar tragedy with respect to gender affirming care.

Any violence or threats of violence should be fully investigated and addressed under the law. But investigating, prosecuting, or silencing those who question or disagree with the still very new and rapidly evolving field of gender affirming care will not only risk violating the First Amendment rights of all Americans, but will prevent the medical profession from determining and providing the safest and most effective treatments for gender dysphoric patients. Rigorous and open debate about the risks and benefits of any treatment—including gender affirming care—must not be suppressed, and to conflate this necessary debate with promoting violence against healthcare workers is deeply irresponsible.

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Michael Shellenberger: Regarding Hurricanes, the News Media Narrative Does Not Fit the Facts

Michael Schellenberger makes a strong case for journalism malpractice and warns us that prominent news outlets are working hard to prevent meaningful conversations.

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Today’s 5th Circuit Decision–Netchoice v Ken Paxton–Stuns Big Tech

Today's Netchoice opinion out of the 5th Circuit stuns Big Tech, which claimed that it had a First Amendment right to muzzle viewpoints of users. No you don't, said the Court. An excerpt:

A Texas statute named House Bill 20 generally prohibits large social media platforms from censoring speech based on the viewpoint of its speaker. The platforms urge us to hold that the statute is facially unconstitutional and hence cannot be applied to anyone at any time and under any circumstances.

In urging such sweeping relief, the platforms offer a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment. That Amendment, of course, protects every person’s right to “the freedom of speech.” But the platforms argue that buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech.

The implications of the platforms’ argument are staggering. On the platforms’ view, email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business. What’s worse, the platforms argue that a business can acquire a dominant market position by holding itself out as open to everyone—as Twitter did in championing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party.” Blue Br. at 6 & n.4. Then, having cemented itself as the monopolist of “the modern public square,” Packingham v. North Carolina, 137 S. Ct. 1730, 1737 (2017), Twitter unapologetically argues that it could turn around and ban all pro-LGBT speech for no other reason than its employees want to pick on members of that community, Oral Arg. at 22:39–22:52.

Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say. Because the district court held otherwise, we reverse its injunction and remand for further proceedings.

In the meantime, during Congressional testimony, Facebook admits that it has been coordinating with the Whitehouse & CDC to censor FB users' constitutionally protected speech.

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