Glenn Greenwald, Co-Founder of The Intercept, Resigns To Maintain Journalistic Integrity

I have been in the process of writing an article that I will title, "Everything Is Becoming Religion." This morning, while writing, I noticed that Glenn Greenwald has resigned from The Intercept, a news organization he co-founded. Here is an except from Greenwald's announcement:

The pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom. I began writing about politics fifteen years ago with the goal of combatting media propaganda and repression, and — regardless of the risks involved — simply cannot accept any situation, no matter how secure or lucrative, that forces me to submit my journalism and right of free expression to its suffocating constraints and dogmatic dictates.

Greenwald's resignation comes on the heels of his riveting three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan earlier this week. During that discussion, Greenwald (and Rogan) aimed Greenwald's criticisms at our most prominent legacy media outlets across the entire political spectrum. And now our social media overlords are actively getting into the game. Three hours is a lot of time, but I would urge you to watch every minute of this. It would be a small investment, given that this discussion offers an accurate diagnosis of America's Dys-information Pandemic and some moral clarity about what needs to happen going forward.

Our prominent legacy news outlets have become sad jokes with regard to many critical national issues. Our "news" is now pre-filtered to protect us from basic facts and it treats thinking as though it is a team sport, much like the dogma people are offered in churches. It treats us like we are babies, as though we aren't able to think for ourselves. Our prominent legacy media outlets have so thoroughly choked off meaningful non-partisan information and discussion that this has ripped open up a dangerous information chasm---many of us now inhabit only one of two mostly non-overlapping factual worlds. This has, in turn, led to two exceedingly disappointing choices for President of this Duopoly. If I needed to hire an employee for any type of job in any business, I would never hire either of these candidates and neither would you. But this is where we are, unable to talk with one another about this sad situation with nuance. In fact, too many of us have been convinced that we should hate each other for having differing opinions, even when we are mostly "on the same side of the aisle."

Somehow, there are many Americans who are still convinced that they can uncritically sit back and "turn on the news." What they will actually be exposed to, for the most part, is reporters who are afraid to ask the same basic questions on the job that they actually and instinctively do ask each other in private. Instead of informing us with a wide range of facts and opinions, they are driven to please their bosses and audience. This is not news. This is Not-News. This parallels the deep dysfunction driven by social media, an issue address in the excellent new documentary, "The Social Dilemma."

We now have a News-Industrial Complex that is driven by money and ideology instead of integrity and courage to engage with inconvenient facts. This system is designed to please you, to give you more of what your intuitive side, your System 1, craves. Once you have this epiphany about what is really going on, you will no longer be able to stop seeing it. If you continue watching the "news," you will increasingly think, "Garbage in, Garbage out." It will increasingly realize that prominent legacy news outlets are fucking with our brains to make money and steer elections. Once you have this epiphany, you will experience a greatly heightened annoyance at what passes for "news" Once a critical mass of people have this epiphany, this will be our first step in a long slow recovery.

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald, Co-Founder of The Intercept, Resigns To Maintain Journalistic Integrity

Eric Weinstein Offers Five Words About the So-Called News

Below, I've transcribed an excerpt from Eric Weinstein's essay preceding Episode 39 of his excellent podcast, "The Portal." His warnings reminded me of something I often heard when I attended national conventions of Free Press. At those conventions, it was often said that one of the biggest stories is how the press covers the news, but that the press rarely covers how it is covering the news.

Marshall McLuhan['s] famous five word adage, "the medium is the message" can be interpreted as saying that the vehicle of communications is actually likely to be the principal constituent of the payload it delivers . . .

In the news media business, many people think that there is always a search for the most eyeballs. Yet there also arose a concept called the "Friday News Dump," which sought to find the spot in the week where people would give the least attention for the dissemination of bad news. Likewise, print media writers learn to hide their true underlying stories by "burying the lede" when the main story had to be told, but was not favorable to the paper's way of thinking. This would sometimes be handled in what is internally called the "to be sure paragraph," where the author too often effectively confesses the mitigating truth that they had hoped to avoid, at least until the penultimate paragraph many layers deep.

Well, what happens when you can actually calculate where your audience will stop reading, listening, feeling or thinking? Studies have suggested that just over half of all people spend 15 seconds or less reading an article while digitally grazing. Likewise, nearly three out of five link-sharers have not so much as clicked on the headline that they're passing on. . . . This . . . creates a fantastic opportunity for those whose ethics are sufficiently flexible. A particular form of our five word law when applied to news media would be "the headline generates the story" or "the headline is the story." Once this has been discovered, we see that, increasingly, the purpose of the article in our era is not to inform, but to minimally support the desired headline for wide dissemination.

Other forms of this principle are that, at least in the eyes of the weak and the dim, "the slogan is the platform," "accusation generates its own conviction," "the indignation is the reputation," "swarms generate their own consensus," "the messenger is the message" and "the aspiration is the implementation." This also explains the underlying wisdom of the moronic phrase, "not a good look bro." It is often a warning that you're saying something in legacy reality without regard to the optical limits of the situation. Here the most important word may well be "bro." It's a corruption or shortening of brother, letting you know that you are now in an informal world where barely the first three letters will be read before the word becomes too cumbersome to complete.

In an attempt to sum up, then I will leave you with this. There is not only a market for your attention, but one for your inattention as well. Your smartphone may well put all the world's information at your fingertips as is so often remarked upon. But unlike the fabled Library of Alexandria, it puts all the world's disinformation, misinformation, noise and distraction, as well. And what our CEOs and technologists have learned is that your emotions are responsive to objects and not substance when there are cat and GoPro videos to be watched. Increasingly, there will be a war on anyone found to be attempting to traffic in higher recursion limits.

Continue ReadingEric Weinstein Offers Five Words About the So-Called News

Divided We Are Falling

Eric Weinstein's Tweet isn't really about the "race" of this perpetrator and the "race" of this victim. Tomorrow there will be another incident in which the "races" will be reversed and then that news coverage (and lack thereof) will also be reversed. THAT is what is tragic. We are now divided so sharply that we refuse to see the humanity in members of outgroups.

To satisfy our selectively-blinded morality and to sell commercials, our respective teams of "news" media now look only for facts that fit predetermined narratives, ignoring everything that doesn't fit. In other words, our "news" stories are pre-written nuance free, with a few blanks left open for tonight's names and tonight's minor details. And since there is so much going on, they will easily find the stories they seek, the kinds of stories that are guaranteed to make us nod, then clench our fists, then vomit our anger at the opposing team on social media.

We and our teams of "news" media have trained each other so very well that these insane battle lines now seem inevitable. So much so that if Jesus, The Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King all suddenly appeared and earnestly reminded us to love both our neighbors and our enemies, it would would unite us, if only for a moment. We would tell them all to go fuck off.

Continue ReadingDivided We Are Falling

There is no better Time Than Right Now to Make Certain that Colleges and Universities Affirm Their Commitment to Free Speech

Free speech is increasingly being attacked at colleges as university. It it claimed by many the vigorous and free speech is a bad idea in that it allegedly harms students and faculty. This is a critical time to push back hard on such claims. Muzzled speech and censorship conflict with the main purpose of colleges, which is to expose students to many diverse ideas and to train them to deal with the ideas they find objectionable by discussing them civilly.

Greg Lukianoff of FIRE (FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION) warns:

Threats to free speech and academic freedom on campus constantly change: One year, it’s speech codes and federal government overreach that present the greatest danger. The next, it could be speaker disinvitations and heckler’s vetoes.

With the targets constantly shifting, what are some effective steps college presidents can take right now to fight censorship, regardless of where it originates? Presidents like to say they are in favor of free speech, but few have presented a plan of action that would improve the state of free speech for their students and faculty members.

In this video, Lukianoff asserts that the presidents of colleges and universities need to hear these five things loud and clear:
1. Stop violating the law.
2. Pre-commit / recommit to free speech and inquiry.
3. Defend the free speech rights of your students and faculty loudly, clearly, and early.
4. Teach free speech from day one.
5. Be scholars: Collect data.

Lukianoff urges everyone concerned with these issues to take action today:

Share this list with your college or university president to let them know that you want them to lead the way in protecting free speech and academic freedom on campus.
Lukianoff urges everyone concerned with these issues to take action today:
Share this list with your college or university president to let them know that you want them to lead the way in protecting free speech and academic freedom on campus.

The Mission of FIRE:

FIRE’s mission is to defend and sustain the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates students, faculty, alumni, trustees, and the public about the threats to these rights on our campuses, and provides the means to preserve them.

Continue ReadingThere is no better Time Than Right Now to Make Certain that Colleges and Universities Affirm Their Commitment to Free Speech