The 4th Estate Thread Has Surrendered

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Holman
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Holman »

Jaymann wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:38 pm Once again the Democrats should be hammering the crime of home invasion against a sitting Speaker of the House. Somebody, anybody?
Where do they hammer it?

All the major Dem figures have decried the attack and called it out as the result of Republican messaging. Name a Dem, and they've tweeted or given a statement about it. The problem is that the Dems don't have media organs dedicated to reinforcing their messages and suppressing the opposition's the way Republicans do. (And, no, MSNBC does not count.)

You'll see the Dems' messaging on Twitter and on Facebook, but only if you follow the Dems and their allies. Meanwhile, Fox will spend every broadcast minute muddying the story, and the top-circulating media sources on FB are mostly right-leaning ones.

Of course the MSM will report on the event but then retreat into its default stance of "reporting, not amplifying," and the story will drop away.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

The top story this weekend by eyeballs has been the Halloween incident in Seoul. NY Times and CNN and the the rest have constant coverage of it. The attack on Pelosi's husband? Lost because there isn't any sensational to report out.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

When Newspaper publishers also publish fake newspapers as a side gig, we know it's going downhill
Fake newspapers designed to drive Illinois voters away from Democratic candidates are being printed at the Des Moines Register's plant, Gannett staff confirmed to Bleeding Heartland.

At least eleven printed publications, which are part of the conservative network Local Government Information Services (LGIS), have been distributed to Illinois residents since August. Sometimes known as "pink slime" journalism, such publications combine political advocacy with stories resembling neutral coverage of local news or sports. The material has the look and feel of a newspaper, but the content is more like political advertising.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

It's almost like megaphoning GOP talking points as "conventional wisdom" is just spreading bad information. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes it doesn't.

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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by LordMortis »

Turns out there is a certain amount of empathy that would cause you to have a different reaction. You just have to have it.
Ouch.
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Pyperkub
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

malchior wrote:It's almost like megaphoning GOP talking points as "conventional wisdom" is just spreading bad information. Sometimes it takes. Sometimes it doesn't.

Local politicians having a say in medical decisions was a monster gaffe.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

It was a monster gaffe. Still lots of reporters (meanly) focused on the stroke beyond all content in the entire debate. We saw reporters across a pretty wide spectrum commenting on Fetterman all through the event live. Olivia Nuzzi tweeted out how painful it was for her to watch the debate for example. Even Ezra Klein made a comment on it in one of his pieces. It was fairly ugly. I have to wonder if beyond accepting 'struggle' the pattern includes simply defiant polarization opposite what 'elite' reporters say is meaningful.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by El Guapo »

malchior wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 10:53 am It was a monster gaffe. Still lots of reporters (meanly) focused on the stroke beyond all content in the entire debate. We saw reporters across a pretty wide spectrum commenting on Fetterman all through the event live. Olivia Nuzzi tweeted out how painful it was for her to watch the debate for example. Even Ezra Klein made a comment on it in one of his pieces. It was fairly ugly. I have to wonder if beyond accepting 'struggle' the pattern includes simply defiant polarization opposite what 'elite' reporters say is meaningful.
Honestly I think a lot of what drives stuff like this is that it's easy to comment on something like Fetterman's stroke recovery and presentation, but relatively difficult to comment on taxation or abortion policies. Anyone can see how Fetterman is presenting himself, but commenting on policy matters requires at least some substantive knowledge of the underlying subject matter.
Black Lives Matter.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

That's probably right. At the core of it, it comes down to the usual problem perhaps. They simply can not get away from horse race coverage. This entire cycle and the reaction to it has shown they didn't learn from 2016 and everything after at all. And when you are doing horse race coverage you have to lens everything on impact on the horse race. That's easier if you are commenting on something readily apparent versus something more complex. For example, it was hard if not impossible to predict the effect of Dobbs on the horse race so they mostly didn't try.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Unagi »

OK, that's fucking hilarious.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Matrix LLC is looking really shady in terms of buying Reporters to do dirty work...

Regulatory capture of the Press - ABC edition:
Microphone and ABC News business card in hand, Hentschel rushed up to a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives before a debate, the candidate recalls, and asked him about 20 dead gopher tortoises that were reportedly found at a nearby construction site. Florida designates the species as threatened...

...A city investigation found no dead tortoises. In fact, it found no evidence at all that any of the reptiles had ever been present.

That wasn't the only surprise. Though Hentschel has done freelance work for ABC, she was not there for the network.

At the time, a political consulting firm called Matrix LLC had paid Hentschel at least $7,000, the firm's internal ledgers show. And Matrix billed two major companies for Hentschel's work, labeling the payments "for Florida Crystals, FPL." (Florida Crystals is a huge sugar conglomerate. FPL is shorthand for the giant utility Florida Power & Light.)
And, of course, the other Southwest envrionmental BS:
Terry Dunn couldn't fathom why Alabama's residents — among the poorest in the U.S. — pay some of the nation's most expensive electricity bills.

So in 2010, Dunn ran for a seat on the state commission that sets energy prices. He promised to hold a formal rate hearing at which Alabama Power executives would have to open their financial books and answer questions, under oath and in public. That hadn't happened for nearly three decades.

After winning, Dunn says, a top lobbyist for the utility took him aside and promised he could hold his roughly $100,000-a-year position on the commission for years — as long as he remained a team player...

lllDunn, a Republican and Tea Party conservative, plowed ahead. And soon enough, he found himself the target of a political pressure campaign, replete with character assassinations and online smears.

Attacks began in online news outlets in 2013. One headline in Yellowhammer News read: "Democrats Embrace Republican Public Service Commissioner Terry Dunn."

In a June 2014 column, Alabama Political Reporter's editor in chief, Bill Britt, cast Dunn as a pawn of his own aide, a Democrat.

"For some Dunn is a populist hero; for others, he's a radical environmentalist," Britt wrote. He saw Dunn as manipulated by those who "find companies like Alabama Power a convenient political target."

These were devastating portrayals for Dunn in a deeply red state.

"Mostly everything was all made up," he says. "You get to thinking, 'Why are they attacking me?' I'm just telling the truth and trying to do what's right for the people."
She's all over the place as a smear-journalist for the Utilities...
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
malchior
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

It's important to note that this came out of specialized reporting on climate change denial and environmental reporting. I expect that if you drill down into other topics you'll find similar infestations throughout the public space.

Moneyed interests blinded us and then installed PR flacks to cover up their rent seeking and grift. This is the outcome of destroying the local media economies and media consolidation overall. "They" don't want local journalists keeping tabs on anything. It is a significant factor why our democracy has seen a breakdown of trust and ultimately decline.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

Washington Post

The tldr; is that a small paper broke the Santos story months ago but went unnoticed because the 4th estate is fragmented and atrophied.
Months before the New York Times published a December article suggesting Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) had fabricated much of his résumé and biography, a tiny publication on Long Island was ringing alarm bells about its local candidate.

The North Shore Leader wrote in September, when few others were covering Santos, about his “inexplicable rise” in reported net worth — from essentially nothing in 2020 to as much as $11 million two years later.

The story noted other oddities about the self-described gay Trump supporter with Jewish heritage, who would go on to flip New York’s 3rd Congressional District from blue to red, and is now under investigation by authorities for misrepresenting his background to voters.

“Interestingly, Santos shows no U.S. real property in his financial disclosure, although he has repeatedly claimed to own ‘a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove’ on Tiffany Road; and ‘a mansion in the Hamptons’ on Dune Road,” managing editor Maureen Daly wrote in the Leader. “For a man of such alleged wealth, campaign records show that Santos and his husband live in a rented apartment, in an attached rowhouse in Queens.”
The end of the piece really gets to the heart of the dysfunction.
Kim Como, a spokeswoman for Newsday, did not answer specific questions about the paper’s coverage of Santos but said in a statement: “We are continuing to cover the Santos story every day.”

It’s possible that the Leader’s reporting fell into a void in part because there are fewer papers to cover the news than in the past. The number of journalists has declined by 60 percent since 2005, according to government statistics.

Research from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University this year found that on average two newspapers are disappearing in the U.S. every week. The nation has lost more than a quarter of its newspapers since 2005 and is on track to lose one-third by 2025. There are now more than 1,600 counties with only one newspaper, typically a weekly.

“Local journalists are kind of like having beat cops walking the street,” said Tim Franklin, senior associate dean and professor at the Medill School. “Just as good beat cops can help keep a neighborhood safer, the presence of local journalists help to keep our politics more honest and our government more accountable.”

Franklin predicts that “if we don’t fix the crisis in local news, we’re going to see more George Santos-type cases and instances of politicians going unchecked.”
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Kraken »

A few days ago the Boston Globe ran a story about the decline of the Providence Journal, which was once a heavy hitter in journalism. From a circulation of 250,000 in its heyday, the ProJo is down to 23,000 today -- print AND digital. They used to saturate RI, had bureaus throughout New England, and even sent teams to cover international stories. Today they're down to six reporters and how long Gannet will keep them on life support is an open question.

The Globe has expanded its RI coverage noticeably and is about to do the same in NH. That doesn't make up for the loss of hometown newspapers but at least it's coverage.

Boston is a rare city that still has two competing daily newspapers -- the liberal Globe and the conservative Herald. "Competing" is an important word in journalism that's gone almost completely out the window.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

I saw a moment this morning watching Morning Joe where one of the media commentators actually blamed voters for falling for it. That was a fast transition into the usual lack of elite unaccountability. It doesn't help that when they fail they get to run non-stop coverage about the fallout for clicks. They'll just pretend their own incompetence wasn't partly behind it. They'll ask questions like, "Why didn't oppo research catch it?" or "Why didn't the authorities catch it?" Cue the spiderman meme. We're in an era where nothing matters. Accountability for anyone but the worst of the elites? Multiple layers of protection failing? All normalized now.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

AP News
A West Virginia journalist lost her job last month after she reported about alleged abuse of people with disabilities within the state agency that runs West Virginia’s foster care and psychiatric facilities.

Amelia Ferrell Knisely, a reporter at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, said she was told to stop reporting on the Department of Health and Human Resources after leaders of the embattled agency “threatened to discredit” the publicly funded television and radio network. She later learned her part-time position was being eliminated.

In a statement, Knisely said her news director told her the order came from WVPB Executive Director Butch Antolini, former communications director for Republican Gov. Jim Justice. Antolini has served as executive director since 2021, when his predecessor was ousted after Justice overhauled the agency’s governing board.

Justice has tried unsuccessfully to eliminate state funding for WVPB in the past and was accused of appointing partisan operatives to the board. WVPB receives around $4 million a year in state funding.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Daveman »

So just now on ABCs This Week they open with the "dramatic escalation" in the Biden document story, stating how "more than half a dozen" documents were found. "More than half a dozen"? So 7? Maybe 11? Doesn't sound so terrible that way.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Unagi »

And to be clear, they were found by Biden (people) and turned in. They were not found by way of an FBI raid.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

This unfortunately is inevitable considering how the media works now. Still more than one documents found after the previous deliberate search is a problem. Overall this indicates incredible carelessness as one was potentially related to when Biden was still a Senator before the Obama years. On top the WH has made a complete mess of this as well. It is a real cock up that served up a feast to the professional equivocators.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

An important piece by Will Bunch tying together a large web of corruption and the NY Times partial culpability for the dire state of our democracy. Another curiosity? The NY Times buried the McGonigal story on page A19 and didn't assign any of their National Security folks. Some folks observing the NY Time's coverage of McGonigal has led some to wonder if McGonigal was one of the key sources in the Clinton coverage in 2016.

The Philly Inquirer

The NYT should tell readers whether it helped crooked FBI agents get Trump elected in 2016
It was arguably the most consequential “October Surprise” in the history of American presidential elections. In the waning days of the 2016 race, with polls showing Hillary Clinton clinging to a lead over Donald Trump, two last-minute stories broke that rekindled on-the-fence voters’ ethical doubts about Democrat Clinton and quashed a budding scandal around her GOP rival.

Except the “October Surprise” was no surprise to one key player: Rudolph Giuliani, the ex-New York mayor and Trump insider who later became the 45th president’s attorney. Late that month, Giuliani told Fox News that the trailing Republican nominee had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

Just two days later, then-FBI director James Comey revealed the bureau had reopened its probe into Clinton’s emails, based on the possible discovery of new communications on a laptop belonging to disgraced New York politico Anthony Weiner. The news jolted the campaign with a particularly strong boost from the New York Times, which devoted two-thirds of its front page to the story — and the notion it was a major blow to Clinton’s prospects.

...

The supposed bombshell — it turned out there was nothing incriminating or particularly new on the laptop — wasn’t the only FBI-related story that boosted Trump in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign. On Oct. 31, citing unnamed “intelligence sources,” the Times reported, “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.” That article defused a budding scandal about the GOP White House hopeful — at least until after Trump’s shock election on Nov. 8, 2016. In the coming days and weeks, the basis of that Times article would melt, but by then the most unlikely POTUS in U.S. history was ensconced in the Oval Office.

There are many reasons for Trump’s victory, but experts have argued the FBI disclosures were decisive. In 2017, polling guru Nate Silver argued that the Comey probe disclosure cost Clinton as many as 3-4 percentage points and at least one percentage point, which would have flipped Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and handed her the Electoral College.

...

This week’s stunning corruption charges against a top FBI spymaster who assumed a key role in the bureau’s New York office just weeks before 2016′s “October surprise” — an agent who by 2018 was known to be working for a Vladimir Putin-tied Russian oligarch — should cause America to rethink everything we think we know about the Trump-Russia scandal and how it really happened that Trump won that election.

The government allegations against the former G-man Charles McGonigal (also accused of taking a large foreign payment while still on the FBI payroll) and the outsized American influence of the sanctioned-and-later-indicted Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska — also tied to U.S. pols from Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort to Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell — should make us also look again at what was really up with the FBI in 2016.

How coordinated was the effort in that New York field office to pump up the ultimate nothingburger about Clinton’s emails while poo-pooing the very real evidence of Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, and who were the agents behind it? What was the role, if any, of McGonigal and his international web of intrigue? Was the now-tainted McGonigal a source who told the New York Times that fateful October that Russia was not trying to help Trump win the election — before the U.S. intelligence community determined the exact opposite? If not McGonigal, just who was intentionally misleading America’s most influential news org, and why?

...

As a veteran journalist, I find the Times’ role in this fiasco — although likely an unwitting one — deeply disturbing. To be sure, the 2016 FBI leaks weren’t the first time a major news organization has been burned by anonymous law enforcement sources, and regrettably it probably won’t be the last. Media critics have been talking for years about the Times’ flawed coverage, and how its near certainty that Clinton would win and a desire to show its aggressiveness toward a future president seems to have skewed its coverage.

It’s not only that America’s so-called paper of record has never apologized for its over-the-top coverage of the Clinton emails or the deeply flawed story about the FBI Trump-Russia probe. It’s that the Times has shown a stunning lack of curiosity about finding out what went wrong. In May 2017, or just seven months after Trump’s election, then-Times executive editor Dean Baquet ended the position of public editor, an independent journalist who was embedded in the newsroom to cover controversies exactly like these.

...

Last week’s indictment of McGonigal is a classic case of raising more questions than were answered. The evidence presented by prosecutors suggests the FBI counterintelligence expert wasn’t introduced to Deripaska until his waning days with the bureau in 2018, aided by a pair of Russian diplomats. In 2019, after he’d retired, the indictment says McGonigal went to work for the oligarch to help him evade U.S. sanctions and to investigate a rival. But the Times also reported that U.S. counterintelligence — in which McGonigal had been a key player — had tried unsuccessfully to recruit Deripaska as an asset in the years around the 2016 election.

Like the Woody Allen character Zelig, Deripaska — a 55-year-old aluminum magnate who at one time was the richest man in Putin’s Russia — is turning up in the background everywhere in the ongoing corruption of American democracy. The oligarch’s history of multimillion-dollar business dealings with Paul Manafort — Trump’s campaign manager in the summer of 2016 — is central to the theory of Russian interference, after it was confirmed that Manafort shared key campaign data with a suspected Russian intelligence agent also connected to Deripaska.

In 2019, Deripaska did manage to get those U.S. sanctions lifted, in a controversial deal backed not only by Team Trump but critically by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. That same year, a Deripaska-linked aluminum company announced it would build a large plant in Kentucky, where McConnell was running for reelection. (It eventually wasn’t built.) This is the same McConnell who, during that critical fall period in 2016, refused to sign a bipartisan statement warning about Russian election interference.

Another coincidence in a scandal that is drowning in so-called coincidences.

It’s becoming clear that the tamping down of the most explosive parts of the Trump-Russia story is the greatest case of gaslighting since the George Cukor movie dropped in 1944. It’s not just the FBI leaks in New York. We also learned last week — yes, thanks to that same New York Times — about the extraordinary and ethically dubious lengths that Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, and Barr’s handpicked special prosecutor John Durham, went to to try to prove the FBI was out to sink Trump. That’s the exact opposite of what really happened. Indeed, the Times noted the only major criminality turned up in the Durham probe was a potentially explosive new charge of financial impropriety — by Donald Trump.

...

Why does it matter? Trump is no longer president, after all, and America has a lot of other problems, with police brutality and mass shootings currently on the front burner. Yet when it comes to this all-encompassing Trump-Russia scandal, the past isn’t even past. The seemingly untouchable 45th president was in New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend, campaigning to become the 47th. The man that critics call “Moscow Mitch” McConnell could return as majority leader in that same election. And Putin’s obsession with Ukraine — always a focus of his U.S. interference and Trump dealings — has become a war with dire global implications.

More importantly, this never-ending scandal has demolished our trust is so many institutions — an FBI that seems to have corrupted an election, a Justice Department that covered up those deeds instead of exposing them, and, yes, a New York Times that enabled several lies instead of exposing them.

Congress and Merrick Garland’s Justice Department can shine a true light on this giant mess, but there’s a reason I’m picking on the New York Times today. It’s a massive temple of journalism that gives us both great work (like the Barr-Durham piece) and inexcusably bad work on a daily basis. The Times can finally apologize for the sins of 2016, expose exactly what went wrong, and then reveal the rest, so this kind of disaster never happens again. They owe it to American democracy.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Newsflash! A huge part of the problem is uninformed journalists:
Too many journalists “lack an understanding of basic economics or lack confidence reporting it,” which brings a “high risk to impartiality,” the report found.

Furthermore, Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, who penned the 50-page review, said they were “disturbed by how many [viewers] said they didn’t understand [the BBC’s] coverage,” especially those from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

“Should broad impartiality concern itself with the extent to which different groups find the coverage accessible?,” wrote the pair. “We think it should.”

The report said journalists struggle to communicate that “fiscal policy decisions are political choices and are not inevitable.” Examples were raised of BBC journalists saying the government “will have to” carry out a specific economic manoeuvre when there were in fact several choices on offer.
The stupid repetition of he said, she said economics (and other crap) with zero understanding or analysis definitely lends itself to stupid reporting in the US as well.
Black Lives definitely Matter Lorini!

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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

Yikes. I briefly skimmed the substack piece at the heart of this and it's...a fairly implausible conspiracy theory. I can't imagine why a NYT staff member would be elevating this. Unfortunately, this "theory" has been published by several outlets as well and the White House has decided to strongly deny it.

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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by El Guapo »

Amazing journalism malpractice story.

Basically the Columbia Journalism Review commissioned a story about The Nation's reporting on Russia, which has been very pro-Trump (or alternatively anti-anti-Trump). That story showed all sorts of problems with The Nation's reporting. The CJR editor, who had ties to The Nation and may have expected a more pro-Nation story, tied the story down with edits and then ultimately killed it. Shortly thereafter CJR published a very pro-Trump story casting Russia investigative journalism as a witchhunt.

What a mess.
Black Lives Matter.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

I hadn't seen that but I am glad an article came out because I've been tracking this for a few days since Duncan Campbell announced he was going to publish the story that was spiked. The affair was until now discombobulated enough to need someone to pull it together in one place in long format. Glad Jonathan Chait did so. It's really important.

One thing I'd point out is an issue that I think Chait didn't want to go into. I suspect he thought adding another layer would be difficult but is important. Gerth is the same guy who wrote the highly error filled story at NY Times about Whitewater in the 90s and launched a thousand special counsel investigations that had a direct line to Clinton's impeachment. Later on when all the material errors and misstatements about the NYT coverage came out in the mid-2000s he blamed the editors and became estranged. He became a strong NY Times critic but he was clearly a partisan hack. (Ken Vogel has that position as chief partisan hack at the paper now). And here he is again attacking the Clintons and carrying water for Republican whisper campaigns. And CJR helped him out.

To me it is further evidence that we have deep, deep rot in elite circles. We are seeing explicit manipulation that favors the worst actors who are destroying our democracy. Worse it works and no one is ever held accountable. That Gerth is still out there writing critiques should be baffling. He was excommunicated from the NY Times for a reason. I mean it starts with the assumption that Trump was vindicated in Russiagate. I dare anyone to read the Mueller report in detail and think Trump or his team were ever vindicated. It's like the media has memory holed the findings of the whole Mueller report.
Last edited by malchior on Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

The 4th estate has been turned into a 5th column.
It's almost as if people are the problem.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

Isgrimnur wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:11 pm The 4th estate has been turned into a 5th column.
One column for each of the 5 Corporations that own nearly all media in the United States.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Isgrimnur »

redacted
Last edited by Isgrimnur on Thu Feb 09, 2023 2:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by ImLawBoy »

That graphic is both wrong and outdated w/r/t AT&T, which never owned TIME and has divested Warner Media (including CNN).
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

Yup - the top 5 now are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global. News Corp is a distant 6th now. Edit: Just looked and News Corp has caught up again and now is close to Discovery.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Jaymann »

malchior wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:30 pm Yup - the top 5 now are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global. News Corp is a distant 6th now. Edit: Just looked and News Corp has caught up again and now is close to Discovery.
You would think with all that capital Discovery could air something besides Ancient Aliens.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by El Guapo »

malchior wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:03 pm I hadn't seen that but I am glad an article came out because I've been tracking this for a few days since Duncan Campbell announced he was going to publish the story that was spiked. The affair was until now discombobulated enough to need someone to pull it together in one place in long format. Glad Jonathan Chait did so. It's really important.

One thing I'd point out is an issue that I think Chait didn't want to go into. I suspect he thought adding another layer would be difficult but is important. Gerth is the same guy who wrote the highly error filled story at NY Times about Whitewater in the 90s and launched a thousand special counsel investigations that had a direct line to Clinton's impeachment. Later on when all the material errors and misstatements about the NYT coverage came out in the mid-2000s he blamed the editors and became estranged. He became a strong NY Times critic but he was clearly a partisan hack. (Ken Vogel has that position as chief partisan hack at the paper now). And here he is again attacking the Clintons and carrying water for Republican whisper campaigns. And CJR helped him out.

To me it is further evidence that we have deep, deep rot in elite circles. We are seeing explicit manipulation that favors the worst actors who are destroying our democracy. Worse it works and no one is ever held accountable. That Gerth is still out there writing critiques should be baffling. He was excommunicated from the NY Times for a reason. I mean it starts with the assumption that Trump was vindicated in Russiagate. I dare anyone to read the Mueller report in detail and think Trump or his team were ever vindicated. It's like the media has memory holed the findings of the whole Mueller report.
There are all sorts of strains of thought that lead to major media failures. The Nation inhabits a strain of left-wing thought that is focused on the United States and its allies (and especially U.S. intelligence agencies) as the prime evil in the world. This view makes it hard to accept stories / narratives where the U.S. government is not the bad guy (or at least, is less bad than another country or actor). This leads to a lot of anti-anti-Trumpism, because they can't embrace Trump, but at the same time they can't bring themselves to side with the U.S. government, U.S. agencies, or often U.S. centrists (like Clinton).

So when a story comes along (like the Russian interference in 2016) where the primary villain is Russia (where there's lingering anti-anti-Cold War thinking), where the victim is Clinton, and where the "good guys" are the U.S. intelligence agencies trying to stop Russia, that leads to a lot of conspiracy theories and magical thinking. "Ah ha! Russia's not the true bad guy here and the U.S. agencies and Clinton aren't the good guys! In fact this was a leak from noble Seth Rich who was murdered by the people that we've been saying are bad all along!"

And this is prone to manipulation by bad actors, because it's easy for Trumpists to take advantage of this. They can point to stuff like The Nation coverage and say "See? Even leftists can see that this Trump-Russia stuff is a lot of nonsense!" and because they can put pieces into the media along these lines themselves.
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malchior
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

El Guapo wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 2:10 pmThere are all sorts of strains of thought that lead to major media failures. The Nation inhabits a strain of left-wing thought that is focused on the United States and its allies (and especially U.S. intelligence agencies) as the prime evil in the world. This view makes it hard to accept stories / narratives where the U.S. government is not the bad guy (or at least, is less bad than another country or actor). This leads to a lot of anti-anti-Trumpism, because they can't embrace Trump, but at the same time they can't bring themselves to side with the U.S. government, U.S. agencies, or often U.S. centrists (like Clinton).
I agree but with respect to Russia at the Nation, they had a dismal record for a pretty obvious reason. It was almost singularly due to Cohen and his outsized influence through his wife.
And this is prone to manipulation by bad actors, because it's easy for Trumpists to take advantage of this. They can point to stuff like The Nation coverage and say "See? Even leftists can see that this Trump-Russia stuff is a lot of nonsense!" and because they can put pieces into the media along these lines themselves.
Yeah this is definitely a component. Especially anything that gives Trump space to distance himself from his still unexplained behavior vis-à-vis Russia. Or the larger issues we've seen with other prominent politicians who act like Russian agents at times. They want to be able to point to a wider opinion space to defend their own behaviors as well. One of the worst being Lindsey Graham. If one of his defenses of Russian interests was played to himself in the 80s he'd probably drop dead.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by ImLawBoy »

malchior wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:30 pm Yup - the top 5 now are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global. News Corp is a distant 6th now. Edit: Just looked and News Corp has caught up again and now is close to Discovery.
"Warner Bros. Discovery" is one company, so that would make Fox 5th (or 4th if they're ahead of Paramount).
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by malchior »

ImLawBoy wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 2:38 pm
malchior wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2023 1:30 pm Yup - the top 5 now are Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global. News Corp is a distant 6th now. Edit: Just looked and News Corp has caught up again and now is close to Discovery.
"Warner Bros. Discovery" is one company, so that would make Fox 5th (or 4th if they're ahead of Paramount).
Actually I accidentally dropped Sony! Fox is nipping at Discovery's revenue. Paramount books well north of both.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

Venture Capital enshittification of the media continues...
CNET pushed reporters to be more favorable to advertisers, staffers say...

...The AI system was always faster than human writers at generating stories, the company found, but editing its work took much longer than editing a real staffer’s copy. The tool also had a tendency to write sentences that sounded plausible but were incorrect, and it was known to plagiarize language from the sources it was trained on. 

Red Ventures executives laid out all of these issues at the meeting and then made a fateful decision: CNET began publishing AI-generated stories anyway. 

“They were well aware of the fact that the AI plagiarized and hallucinated,” a person who attended the meeting recalls. (Artificial intelligence tools have a tendency to insert false information into responses, which are sometimes called “hallucinations.”) “One of the things they were focused on when they developed the program was reducing plagiarism. I suppose that didn’t work out so well.”

Of the 77 articles published on CNET using the AI tool since it launched, more than half have had corrections appended to them, some lengthy and substantial...

...Multiple former employees told The Verge of instances where CNET staff felt pressured to change stories and reviews due to Red Ventures’ business dealings with advertisers. The forceful pivot toward Red Ventures’ affiliate marketing-driven business model — which generates revenue when readers click links to sign up for credit cards or buy products — began clearly influencing editorial strategy, with former employees saying that revenue objectives have begun creeping into editorial conversations. 

Reporters, including on-camera video hosts, have been asked to create sponsored content, making staff uncomfortable with the increasingly blurry lines between editorial and sales. One person told The Verge that they were made aware of Red Ventures’ business relationship with a company whose product they were covering and that they felt pressured to change a review to be more favorable.
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Also: There are three ways to not tell the truth: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

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And people wonder why I don't trust review sites that have affiliate links...
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Grifman »

Internal FOX emails released in Dominion lawsuit and they are as bad as you thought they would be:



Lots of fun stuff here.
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by Unagi »

Oh, how I wish news like this could fill me with hope.

Will it blow the lid off FOX News though? I highly doubt it. Talk about a "shoot a man in Times Square" equivalent. These guys can be caught red-handed admitting they are full of shit, and they would get back on the air and feed their audience the next shovel of shit.

I almost think the people that watch FOX news know it's bullshit, but they say what they want to hear and they are on TV so it's as legitimate as their feelings will ever be expressed, so there is NO CHANCE they will stop sucking from the teat.

(and 'what they want to hear' is very general: they just want to hear that the intellectual liberals are wrong, are idiots, and/or are here to destroy your way of life. The details, and ultimately their accuracy, are totally beside the point)
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Re: The Semi-Official Death Watch of the 4th Estate Thread

Post by LordMortis »

Unagi wrote: Fri Feb 17, 2023 9:33 am I almost think the people that watch FOX news know it's bullshit, but they say what they want to hear and they are on TV so it's as legitimate as their feelings will ever be expressed, so there is NO CHANCE they will stop sucking from the teat.
Having fallen greatly in the last decade, I am projecting what I have become to what they are. I suspect their veiwership is vulnerable to watching to stay informed while simply hearing and not listening to anything outside of their sourcing. I see it all the time in the few remaining associates I have who expose themselves to that messaging. We talk. They are interested in advancing the news they are aware of and any other news just rolls off them like water when they have been sprayed freshly with newsproofing.

I remember the days of dialog... At least on my part, but I've grown tired and my tolerance for tainted information (mostly from the right) has dropped to zero and beyond that my defenses against it are up. Once the bullshit meter hits 0.05, you are talking past me. It's something I need to work on, but can't see myself actually doing until the date of the current state of the GOP and it's influencers are sent to pasture.
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