The Southwest Airlines Crisis Illustrates our Politically Divided News Media

Look who is and who is not covering the Southwest Airlines breakdown and the potential culpability of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. At Lever News, David Sirota describes this daunting problem in his article, "The Partisan Ghost In The Media Machine":

This media dysfunction exemplifies what I’ve previously called The Algorithm: an information ecosystem in which news outlets promote or suppress facts based on whether those facts will flatter or offend their audience’s partisan impulses.

Stories that might shame Democrats are amplified by right-wing media, but effectively shadowbanned by legacy and left-of-center media that do not want to offend a liberal readership that loathes news that might shame the Democratic politicians they worship. This is why previous reporting months ago about Buttigieg’s refusal to do his job was similarly erased from the liberal discourse.

It’s the same thing on the other side: Reporting that might embarrass Republicans is touted by those legacy and left-of-center media, but never mentioned by right-wing media outlets that don’t want to offend the MAGA movement....

When journalism that embarrasses Democratic politicians is promoted by Fox News — and ghosted by MSNBC — liberals either never see the reporting, or they get to eyeroll and smugly laugh at it, insisting the verifiable facts must be false just because they happen to be amplified by Rupert Murdoch rather than by Rachel Maddow. The converse is also true: When facts embarrassing Republicans are reported by MSNBC — and ignored by Fox News — most conservatives never even see them, and those who do get to brush it off as “fake news” from “liberal media.”

This dynamic is a big part of the democracy crisis in America. It has created two throngs of zombie partisans fighting a never-ending war of attrition from behind screens that tell them only what they want to hear, and censor facts that might alter their thinking.

Fixing this nightmare requires the kind of media that Joseph Pulitzer envisioned — a media that will “never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong.”

Clearly, America doesn’t have that media — and many seem to know it, as polls show trust in media plummeting.

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Applauding Heterodox News Media

#1 is an excellent comment by Glenn Greenwald that is critical of our tribal media corporations. When I post heterodox comments or questions, the most vocal comments at FB accuse me of being a Republican, Under Russian Influence, "What's happened to you?" etc. We'll see what happens here. And no, I'm not defending Donald Trump (I didn't vote for him and I think he was massively destructive as a president). Because I think Nancy Pelosi's suspicious skyrocketing wealth should be investigated. This doesn't mean I am right-leaning (I'm not). Because I don't like Coke doesn't mean that I like Pepsi. Amen to Tucker Carlson's criticism of both Pelosi AND Mitch McConnell. We need a lot fewer people who consider thinking to be a team sport.

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For 2023, How about Fewer Headlines Like These?

We must not forget that the New York Times cheer-leaded us into Iraq, thanks to a long stream of inaccurate WMD articles by Judith Miller and Thomas Friedman. The NYT is currently a big promoter or U.S. military involvement in Ukraine. It makes you wonder whether the NYT full-on uncritical embrace of Russiagate was the warm-up act for its Ukraine position.

At some point, we need to recognize that insanity is watching the NYT do the same thing over and over, yet assume that it will act otherwise.

My hope for 2023: That our journalists (especially the NYT) will become more thoughtful, more open to evidence, and there will be fewer articles like:

Greenwald's discussion below is well worth watching and carefully bolstered with evidence and topped off with comments by Noam Chomsky:

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Writer Displeases Boss by Failing to Find Evidence of J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia

Editor: Go gather J.K. Rowling's worst transphobic quotes.

Writer: I cannot find ANY J.K. Rowling transphobic quotes.

Writer is then branded transphobic and barraged with violent imagery and death threats.

Short Video interview here.

Continue ReadingWriter Displeases Boss by Failing to Find Evidence of J.K. Rowling’s Transphobia

Tara Henley Diagnosis the News Media with Holly Doan

On her recent podcast at "Lean Out," journalist Tara Henley interviewed Holly Doan, who has done traditional meticulous self-critical reporting in Canada for decades.

Holly Doan: It's embarrassing for us.. . . I think the media has not done itself any favors by so much navel gazing, and so much self absorption. Wake up. Pay attention to your readers! I think the journalists have forgotten who their readers are. They don't even know who they're writing for anymore. I'm not going to say. Are they ready for the government? Are they ready for each other? I don't know. But as someone else said recently, it's uncomfortable to watch this suicide because it is industry self-immolation. I think that is media waking up. I don't know. I guess you'll see if there is a difference in the content. That's how you will judge if media is waking up. . . .

I've been asked to give a number of talks on this subject to different groups, some private think tanks recently. And everyone has the same question. What the hell's wrong with media tell us all like what's wrong with media? You know, are they are they lazy? Are they stupid? Are they woke? Or is it all narratives? Is it activist journalism? What happened?

I actually have a perspective that's a little bit different. And that I think that it has to do with the skill set. When I was a young journalist, I started at a very small television station, and part of my job was to twice a week get into the company Pinto, and bumped across snowy roads to cover town council in places you've never heard of, like boys, Vane and Verdun. And from there, you might cover the this was in the city of small City of Brandon, Manitoba, and you've covered the school board and you cover the University Board of Governors meetings, and then you move to Saskatoon and you covers city city council. And then you move to Alberta and you cover the legislature and maybe some courts. And through that decade's long process of learning a craft, you start to understand how government works, how different levels of government relief journalism is not taught in universities. It's something you can't learn in universities. It's an apprenticeship. You have to apprentice to make your mistakes and learn so that by the time you arrive in Ottawa--so 11 years after all of that I arrived in Ottawa, still feeling quite incompetent, and not even ready for what is arguably the biggest story now in the country.

Well, that doesn't happen anymore. Now you have journalists who go to journalism school, where they're not taught anything about covering courts or local council, because it's apprenticeship system, remember? And they go straight to their first jobs on Parliament Hill. Well, how can you know anything about how to cover a farm subsidy program, you might not even know a farmer? How do you cover a business loan program you might even not even know a small business owner. So that's one thing. That's the reporters....

The reporters are no longer telling the desk what the story is because the reporters aren't on the ground and the ones who are on the ground, the few of them that are left, graduated Carlton three years ago. It's a little bit like the analogy I like to use is, you know, when when Mao took over after the revolution in China in 1949, the first thing he did was kill all the tailors because they were a bad class background. And after 25 years, if you looked at images of China on TV, you could tell that no one knew how to make a suit anymore. The tailors were gone. That's a little bit like what's happened to journalism. The skills are gone. Journalism isn't dying. On the ground level, it's dead. Next, you're gonna ask me how do we get it back? I'm not really sure, Tara I'm not really sure. All I know is that you try to focus on Thomas Blackhawks, old timey journalism where we just look at the documents and cover committees and hope that that resonates enough. That Canadians will demand that kind of work. And they are. Tara Henley 5:15 I mean, what you just said it makes the hair on my arms stand up, because I just think it's so important that we have kind of detailed holding of all levels of government to account and that we have an informed citizenry. [More . . . ]

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