Journalism, USAID Style
Why legacy media marches in lockstep:
"USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 "media" NGOs, including nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine."
About the Illusion of Information Adequacy
What happens when to a person who fails to expose themselves to only a few "news" sources? What does it do to their world view when they fail to take affirmative steps to engage with a broadbased news ecosystem that includes viewpoints they disagree with? For instance, what happens when they only follow legacy (corporate) news outlets? What happens when they refuse to consider independent journalists? What I've noticed is that they are much more confident in their opinions, not less. What's going on? At X, Owen Gregoian offers an explanation of the "Illusion of of information adequacy." Excerpt:
Why We’re Confident with Only Half the Story | Neuroscience NewsSummary: A new study reveals that people often overestimate the amount of information they have when making decisions, a phenomenon researchers call the “illusion of information adequacy.”
Participants who were only given partial information about a situation were just as confident in their decisions as those who had the complete story. They believed they had enough facts and thought others would likely make the same choice. However, when some participants were later presented with the opposing view, many were open to changing their decision, suggesting that having more complete information can bridge misunderstandings.
Key Facts
- People feel confident in decisions, even with only partial information.
- This “illusion of information adequacy” leads to overconfidence in judgments.
- Additional information often leads to more informed, balanced decision-making.
Source: Ohio State University
Of course, the same problems result with the government or the legacy news consortium limit your access to alternate viewpoints. In these circumstances we are fooled by a false consensus. It looks like everyone agrees, but this is only because everyone else has been censored. That leads to such things as allowing others to put a dangerous so-called vaccine into your arm. When free speech is limited, it leads to things like this:
Another Oopsie in Favor of the Narrative by Legacy Media
This is not a new low for legacy media. This is what they do all day every day. They are serving their masters. Journalism has absolutely nothing to do with how they handle stories with political implications.
Matt Taibbi: The Bullshit Stories of 2024
2024 was the year in which people we used to call “elites,” i.e. party heads, intelligence chiefs, CEOs, media celebrities, university presidents, and so on, exhausted real-life strategies for maintaining institutional trust and were reduced to trying to bullshit their way through crises holding no cards at all. Stories like “the politics of joy” were patches used to cover up what in 2024 became big cracks in the illusion of elite competence. For every over-covered pseudo-story like “joy” or “the new masculinity,” 2024 saw ostentatious non-coverage of big, real questions, many still unanswered.
Here are Taibbi's nominations for the top four BS stories o 2024:
1. WHO’S RUNNING THE COUNTRY? "We now know America hasn’t had a functioning president for at least this year and probably longer, which means someone other than the president has been making presidential decisions.
2. HOW WAS JOE BIDEN INDUCED TO END HIS 2024 CAMPAIGN? "Sy Hersh, writing in a July 27th Substack piece called Leaving Las Vegas, reported an unnamed “official” said the deal went down Saturday, July 20th. “Obama called Biden after breakfast and said, ‘Here’s the deal. We have Kamala’s approval to invoke the 25th Amendment,’” the source said."
3. WHO WERE TRUMP’S WOULD-BE ASSASSINS? "[A]ctual coverage of the assassination attempt in papers like the Washington Post was near zero, with little to no information emerging from law enforcement sources and even editorial treatments mostly limited to denunciations of “conspiracy theories” that emerged in the wake of Trump’s shooting."
4. WHAT’S WITH THE DRONE GASLIGHTING? "Is there a threat or not? Someone is lying. Kentucky’s Rand Paul blocked the Senate measure, but the ongoing episode demonstrates that the FAA, DOD, DHS, FBI etc. are holding back what they know about the recent War of the Worlds remake for… what reason exactly? Has unreality become a principle all its own?" Matt Taibbi, excerpt from "Gaslit Nation: From drones to terrorists, authorities are having a laugh at the public's expense":
If you’re in the growing population of Americans that is tired of being fed streams of sensational and inexplicable news stories, while authorities that appear to delight in public confusion sit back with buttoned lips, yesterday might have been the last straw. We are officially Gaslit Nation ... I don’t know what officials are up to, when they leak like sieves about some issues (Russiagate, Luigi Mangione) and refuse to provide even basic answers about others (New Jersey drones, Thomas Crooks, Covid origins). All we know is there’s an elaborate media strategy at work, one that in the content moderation age extends to outright removal of certain materials, like Shamsud bin Jabbar’s Facebook videos. Trying to unwind the logic of these decisions is tiring enough when it’s voluntary, but living in a country that won’t explain things flying over your house is absurd. I get that the president is a corpse, but can’t someone be found to give an old-fashioned Oval Office speech? Why leave us to chew over so much crazy?
X Explodes With Evidence that Numerous UK Girls Have been Raped by Pakistani Gangs. US Legacy News is Silent.
X is rapidly filling with credible posts providing evidence that numerous UK girls, at least 1,500, have been raped by Pakistani gangs over the years, yet the police have been covering this up and, in fact, criminally prosecuting UK citizens who try to express concerns about these rapes on social media. Tommy Robinson's courageous reporting has been critical to bringing the issue of these UK rapes to the fore, yet Tommy is currently in UK prison for the crime of reporting on this issue.
Could the number of victims really be closer to 250,000 girls?
Consider Samantha Smith's allegations:
Bill Ackman weighs in:
Tommy Robinson's documentary, "Silenced," can be viewed here. It is gripping and horrifying. Tommy has made a very strong case and yet he sits in prison for exposing societal dysfunction and corruption:
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