We Need Fewer Stenographers and More Real News Reporters
Matt Lee is a real news reporter doing real work. Lee is not letting this government-employee bullshit artist escape. We need a lot more reporters like Matt Lee.
Matt Lee is a real news reporter doing real work. Lee is not letting this government-employee bullshit artist escape. We need a lot more reporters like Matt Lee.
I'm still in the process of watching Joe Rogan's fascinating interview of Dr. Robert Malone.
Why might we want to listen to Malone (even though his Twitter account of 500,000 followers was suspended by Twitter two days ago)? Consider this brief description of his accomplishments:
Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of the nine original mRNA vaccine patents, which were originally filed in 1989 (including both the idea of mRNA vaccines and the original proof of principle experiments) and RNA transfection. Dr. Malone, has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications which have been cited over 12,000 times. Since January 2020, Dr. Malone has been leading a large team focused on clinical research design, drug development, computer modeling and mechanisms of action of repurposed drugs for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Malone is the Medical Director of The Unity Project, a group of 300 organizations across the US standing against mandated COVID vaccines for children. He is also the President of the Global Covid Summit, an organization of over 16,000 doctors and scientists committed to speaking truth to power about COVID pandemic research and treatment.
Malone's interview is leaving me with the concern about who in the hell I can trust about anything at all related to COVID. I would recommend it to anyone who is thinking that the mainstreams news messaging about COVID is too pretty, too consistent, too sterilized.
Which brings me to a related point. Malone mentions and describes the "Trusted News Network," a truth commission of sorts established by many large media players. I'm merely beginning my education of the function of that Network, but wanted to share this link as I move forward. It is from an article by Elizabeth Woodworth titled "COVID-19 and the Shadowy “Trusted News Initiative”" that begins with this paragraph:
What do the inventor of mRNA technology; the lead author of the most downloaded paper on Covid-19 in the American Journal of Medicine; a former editor of the American Journal of Epidemiology; renowned epidemiologists at Harvard, Stanford, and Oxford; and France’s leading microbiologist – have in common?They have all been censored by a repressive media network that most people have never heard of. This network has outrageously conceived and conveyed a “monopoly of legitimate information.”
Here are a few excerpts:
Two weeks after WHO announced the Covid-19 pandemic on March 11, 2020, Canada’s CBC reported that the Trusted News Initiative had announced plans “to tackle harmful coronavirus disinformation.”
“Starting today, partners in the Trusted News Initiative will alert each other to disinformation about coronavirus, including ‘imposter content’ purporting to come from trusted sources. Such content will be reviewed promptly to ensure that disinformation is not republished.” [xiii]
Woodworth further reports:
An international process of editorial standardization has delivered unprecedented news coverage of the monopolized message:The pandemic threatens the survival of all humanity
There is no therapy to cure the sick
It is necessary to confine the whole population, and
The delivery will come only from a vaccine.[iii]
Many people have been dismayed by the singularity of this propaganda, and how it could possibly have been achieved. That is the subject of this study.
Fascinating and disturbing. Agreeing as a group to report any version of "truth" inevitably conflicts with what should be the job of a serious journalist: To follow the facts wherever they lead. The proper way to do journalism inevitably leads to different interpretations and even different relevant facts. Journalism should lead to an ever-churning cacophony that will continually be processed in the marketplace of ideas. The Trusted Network appears to be a "truth-cartel" aimed at justifying pre-determined conclusions, which is exactly what is bearing out when one follows the censorship of news providers and social media.
I double checked Greenwald's claim and it is stunning true. You won't find a single word about Lia Thomas by the NYT, NPR or WP. That's today's favored way to win an policy argument: Make sure that opposing/inconvient facts don't show up. I think of this as the Tonya Harding strategy for winning an argument and it is disgraceful that major media outlets proudly practice it.
Truly, one of the best ways to lie is to tell only selective truths suppressing other highly relevant information. This method works well in a world where many people are afraid to stray from their long-trusted "confirmatory" news sources. Intercept reporter Ryan Grimm reported on a brand new extensive survey showing that people consider facts like these to be highly relevant to how they feel about this issue of transgender athletes. According to the survey, respondents are overwhelmingly opposed to people with male bodies smashing female athletic records. NYT, NPR and WP are working overtime to suppress this particular story because it runs counter-narrative.
I agree with every bit of Krystal Ball's wrap-up of the major Lies of 2021. She begins her take-down at the 50 minute mark of this video. She and Saagar Enjeti do their homework, week after week, and that is why I financially support them.
The Profitable Siloed-Audience Business Model of Modern "News." Matt Taibbi explains how we got to this point, based on his book, Hate, Inc.
They want to make sure that they can wind you up as much as they can—not just every day, but in the internet era, there's a commercial imperative now to do this every hour, every minute, really every second. It's a moment-to-moment competition and the only way to really compete is to keep riling people up as much as much as you can. They use that CRossfire formula of constant combat to attract audiences and to keep them and addict them to this experience and this can be very damaging to people's mental health, to say nothing of what it does to society.
As a parting thought, I want to leave you all with this idea to recognize that when you watch the news, most people think of this as a public service and in some cases it is. But you really have to understand that it's also a consumer product very much in the same way that blue jeans or cigarettes or twinkies are news products and there are properties that we use to sell our product in the same way that those other kinds of consumer businesses use to sell theirs and what we've learned is that division is the thing that sells most in this current era and you have to understand that just as cigarettes or twinkies can be bad for you the news can also be bad for you. It can be bad for your mental health. It can be addicting in the same way that those products are. So please understand that from our point of view, we've gone from being something that was a business more in the direction of being just about delivering information to being very consumer-oriented, in the current incarnation, and much more about audience and demographic targeting.