The 4th Estate Thread Has Surrendered

[malchior]

Yeah Trump isn't focused on Jews. It's more so the general mass of anyone who stands against him. Immigrants. Brown people. The "woke". Etc. He is essentially going to go on a lawless rampage if elected and we need to 1) stop it from happening and 2) be prepared to survive and resist it if he does win.

Also like, while he's not super focused on Jews *now*, Jews as a group are almost certain to be overwhelmingly against him if he's elected. So even if he doesn't hate Jews now, he will sooner or later as a matter of his overwhelming instinct to punish and destroy anyone who is against him.

Totally agree. The guy is a bottomless void.

[Blackhawk]

Geeze, me bringing that up was just an offhand observation about the media, not about Trump. I'm a stickler for accuracy, and them ascribing him with intent on that one bugged me. A tiny, tiny bit. It's not like anyone here needs to convince anyone here as to what kind of person he is. Even those here who supposedly support him know who he is (and revel in it.)

be prepared to survive and resist it if he does win.

Trying to figure out what that part looks like is terrifying.

[Carpet_pissr]

be prepared to survive and resist flee to another country like a coward if he does win.

Achievement unlocked.

[malchior]

Washington Post

If you haven't heard, there was a major blow up between the Latino community and Univision this week. They aired an extremely friendly interview with Trump where they essentially kissed his ass after Jared Kushner cozied up to the ownership. One of their top anchors flat out quit and several Latino luminaries started calling on Latinos to boycott Univision.

The nation’s largest Spanish-language media company, Univision, faced growing backlash Friday for its handling of a recent interview with former president Donald Trump, as major Latino advocacy groups delivered a letter of protest to the network’s executives and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus prepared to request a meeting with the network.

Actor and comedian John Leguizamo, who recently took a turn as host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” also posted a video on Instagram on Thursday night calling for a boycott of the network until it stopped its rejection of Biden ads, some of which were canceled just before the Trump interview aired.

“I am asking all my brothers and sisters who are actors, artists, politicians, activists to not go on Univision,” he said in a message in English and Spanish.

The pushback comes after a Nov. 7 interview with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida that was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. The interview was notable for its gracious tone, lack of follow-up questions and Trump’s assertion in the first minutes about owners of the network.

“They like me,” Trump said.

It’s a sharp contrast to the long history of tension between Trump and Univision — a fact that alarmed both Democrats and journalists inside Univision.

The network, which has said it has also requested an interview with President Biden, announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews shortly before the Trump interview aired. The network also canceled a booking with a Biden spokeswoman to respond to the interview on a subsequent news broadcast.

A top anchor at Univision in Miami, León Krauze, who helmed the late-night newscast, announced he had abruptly separated from the network Wednesday, less than a week after the interview aired. Neither Krauze nor the network offered a reason for the separation in their statements about the split.

...

Blaya — who hired the network’s most famous anchor, Jorge Ramos — later ran Telemundo, the other major Spanish-language network in the United States. He said the Trump interview this month was a step back for Univision towards a journalistic approach he associated with some major broadcasters in Mexico. The Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long had a close relationship with political power brokers in that country, recently merged with the owners of Univision to take joint control of the company.

...

More than 70 groups — including major Latino rights organizations UnidosUS Action, America’s Voice and MALDEF — sent a letter Friday night to Davis and two other TelevisaUnivision executives who attended the meeting with Trump that described the interview as “a betrayal of trust.”

“We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” the letter reads. “Unfiltered, unaddressed and unrestricted disinformation does a disservice to all communities in the U.S. and will destroy Univision’s reputation as a credible network that informs an important electorate.”

[Pyperkub]

Sports Illustrated

Ortiz isn't the only AI-generated author published by Sports Illustrated, according to a person involved with the creation of the content who asked to be kept anonymous to protect them from professional repercussions.

"There's a lot," they told us of the fake authors. "I was like, what are they? This is ridiculous. This person does not exist."

"At the bottom [of the page] there would be a photo of a person and some fake description of them like, 'oh, John lives in Houston, Texas. He loves yard games and hanging out with his dog, Sam.' Stuff like that," they continued. "It's just crazy."

The AI authors' writing often sounds like it was written by an alien; one Ortiz article, for instance, warns that volleyball "can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with."

According to a second person involved in the creation of the Sports Illustrated content who also asked to be kept anonymous, that's because it's not just the authors' headshots that are AI-generated. At least some of the articles themselves, they said, were churned out using AI as well.

"The content is absolutely AI-generated," the second source said, "no matter how much they say that it's not."

Per Variety, it appears as if this was outsourced content to a company called AdVon (only revealed AFTER they got called out, of course):

A spokesperson for Arena Group said in a statement to Variety, “The articles in question were product reviews and were licensed content from an external, third-party company, AdVon Commerce. A number of AdVon’s e-commerce articles ran on certain Arena websites. We continually monitor our partners and were in the midst of a review when these allegations were raised.

[waitingtoconnect]

Also let’s not forget who got pardons. Those who Didn’t cooperate with authorities in the Mueller probe.

The mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance needed to hate Jews yet love Nazis, Jared kushner and Israel that some maga extremest show is truly mind boggling. And it’s not just rednecks either. A lot of very educated people have bought into this.

It’s very concerning. People have been brainwashed like 1930s Germany. And re member it only took 35% of Germans to bring the Nazis to power. In 1933 most didn’t want them. The opposition was just too divided to fight.

[Smoove_B]

Does this go here?

[LordMortis]

Does this go here?

I do have to wonder why politics and mix with business editorialists so much. At least it's Sorkin and the NYT and not Kernan and the WSJ. Sorkin is generally respectable, though honestly, Quick is by far the best of the trio.

[Pyperkub]

An interesting opinion follow up on the Sports Illustrated AI story which says a lot about journalism in the 21st century

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/29/opinions ... index.html

[Carpet_pissr]

In a wonderful ironic twist, that opinion piece was written by an AI.

[waitingtoconnect]

Does this go here?

If nothing else it’ll drive the conspiracy theorists wild.

[Pyperkub]

CNBC reporting Dominion have six other law suits warming including Guliani, Lindell, and NewsMax also it's likely Fox will pay out of insurance, so cost?,, meh. They just avoid having to have Murdoch and their personalities take the stand. So it's just a payday for Dominion. Great for them, as Zax says, disappointing for the nation.

Lindell going down the Alex Jones wabbit hole... one wonders whether he will be bankrupted and trying to hide assets based on this:

MyPillow is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of equipment and subleasing manufacturing space after several shopping networks and major retailers took the company's products off shelves.

The Chaska-based manufacturer recently listed more than 850 "surplus equipment" items on the online auction site K-Bid. Sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, forklifts and even desks and chairs are up for auction.

Founder and CEO Mike Lindell said MyPillow has experienced a loss in revenue and the items are no longer needed as the company consolidates its operations....

...When asked if the matter of the pending lawsuits has added to the challenges in his business, Lindell said "of course it has."

In April, an arbitration panel ruled that Lindell needed to pay $5 million to a software forensics expert who disproved several of his election claims in a "Prove Mike Wrong" contest. Lindell has challenged that ruling, calling it "frivolous."

"The $5 million is the lowest one," he said. "I will be vindicated in every single one."

Dominion gets access to Newsmax "reporters" texts in defamation case:

Dominion Voting Systems is entitled to review personal communications and text messages of Newsmax Media journalists in its defamation suit against the conservative media company, a Delaware judge ruled last week.

The ruling is a blow to Newsmax, which successfully avoided such a mandate in a similar case and sought to allow its employees to voluntarily offer up any relevant communications.

Given that Newsmax is full-on crazy, I expect these to be juicy...

[malchior]

About my larger concern though, The Post is owned by one of the biggest oligarchs in the United States and he just installed a guy who literally was promoted out of the ranks by Rupert Murdoch himself. He is going to move the paper hard to the right. Bezos picked Lewis for a reason and I doubt it was because it was losing an amount of money that is basically a rounding error to Bezos. For awhile, it was clear that Bezos has been nudging it to the right. I'm not saying Bezos is MAGA but during COVID the Washington Post started slanting especially on COVID and other issues towards the right-wing take. It's been subtle but I expect it'll become more pronounced in the coming year or two. Especially with the election coming.

It's starting already. The article referenced below is long and it is full of...nothing...it's all insinuation and smoke. No evidence. No actual connections to anything. This is the sort of stuff Comer has been pilloried for as he runs his impeachment inquiry. A disgrace of a piece from a surprising source - not just the paper. The author of the piece is Michael Kranish who is a well-respected investigative reporter. The piece starts with a convicted criminal spinning tales that doesn't even allege direct wrong doing. It's sort of a weird piece in the sense that you can almost read a sort of half-heartedness in it.

Last week they ran another piece by Kranish that was equally pointless (talking about how the FBI once looked into a Biden golf membership. It didn't make much of a splash because nothing was there. I don't know if this one will either. Still it is some level of evidence that WaPo is moving into "NY Post" style/level political writing.

I'm not even a Biden fan but this sort of stuff? It's gross. But this is what happens when we have billionaires controlling information.

Headline: James Biden’s dealmaking caught on FBI tapes in unrelated bribery probe

WaPo

Richard “Dickie” Scruggs, a famed Mississippi trial attorney, was tantalizingly close to a historic deal to force tobacco companies to pay billions of dollars — but there was one last hurdle. A divided Congress had to sign off. And Scruggs had identified one of the most skeptical senators, Joe Biden, as a key to winning the vote.

Scruggs turned to Biden’s younger brother James, an old acquaintance who ran a D.C. consulting firm with his wife, Sara.

Scruggs paid the firm $100,000 in 1998 for advice on passing the bill, Scruggs said in an interview at his office here — the first time he has disclosed the amount.

“I probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother,” Scruggs said.

Biden eventually backed the bill, which ultimately failed to pass Congress.

“Jim was never untoward about his influence,” Scruggs said. “He didn’t brag about it or talk about it. He didn’t have to. He was the man’s brother.”

Scruggs’s deal with James Biden highlights how President Biden’s brother has for decades benefited financially from his proximity to his powerful sibling, a relationship that is newly relevant today as congressional Republicans investigate whether President Biden assisted his family members’ business deals. During Joe Biden’s 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and now three years as president, James Biden’s private business work — as a consultant for hire and behind-the-scenes political fixer — has often intersected with his brother’s public responsibilities.

[Alefroth]

That article is the last straw as far as my subscription money goes.

[Zarathud]

There is so much corruption — that the bill never passed. WTF, that’s a pretty irresponsible insinuation.

[Alefroth]

The article generated over 10K comments, the most I've ever seen on a WaPo article. Most of the ones I saw were unhappy with it.

[malchior]

Donald Trump...moderate pragmatist. Sure.

[GreenGoo]

If there's one thing the modern day GOP is, it's pragmatic. Second only to how moderate they are. It's why they fall lock step in line behind Drumpf.

[Pyperkub]

Expanding into Prisons?

In November, Juan Moreno Haines earned a coveted promotion. The California journalist was named editor-in-chief of Solitary Watch, a non-profit news organization reporting on conditions in US prisons.

Haines helps 16 writers craft story ideas, fact-check, edit articles and navigate the many hurdles of reporting on neglect and abuse behind bars, all while dealing with a major obstacle no other media leader in America has to face: he is prohibited from directly communicating with his journalists, most of whom he has never met.

Haines himself has been incarcerated for 27 years and does his job from inside San Quentin prison, the sprawling state prison just north of San Francisco. All of his writers are incarcerated, too.

[Alefroth]

The article generated over 10K comments, the most I've ever seen on a WaPo article. Most of the ones I saw were unhappy with it.

That didn't last long. The Trump disqualification article is up to 16K.

[waitingtoconnect]

Donald Trump...moderate pragmatist. Sure.

Interesting article here that mirrors the thoughts in this thread: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-guardian

Again and again, the mainstream media have drawn a false equivalence between Donald Trump and Joe Biden – asserting that Biden’s political handicap is his age while Trump’s corresponding handicap is his criminal indictments.

But Trump is almost as old as Biden, and Trump’s public remarks and posts are becoming ever more unhinged – suggesting that advancing age may be a bigger problem for Trump than for Biden.

[waitingtoconnect]

Looking at media this morning you’d think trump is president of everywhere. In Us media left and right it’s Trump and what he will do - no mention of Biden. In Uk media left and right it’s Trump : no mention of King Charles or the prime minster. Insane.

Trump is our new king. The media left and right has appointed him so.

[Unagi]

I think 'the media' probably hands us our leaders all the time. Perhaps obviously so. What sucks about our current timeline is that the media (reflecting our entertainment desires) loves a villain. 80 Years ago, I think America loved 'the hero' more (reflected in our entertainment desires), and the media tried to play the presidential storytelling as "which is the better hero". These days, we have swung the other way - 'who is the bigger villain'. But that alone isn't what happened. What shocked the country was that the painting of the "Trump villain" started to win him a base. Actual minions.

[malchior]

The piece itself is not bad but that social media headline writer? Soulless.

[Carpet_pissr]

Yeah, that’s very fucked up. The worst thing is that to the casual reader, it’s so subtle that it doesn’t raise flags. It reads like a typical headline of a news source trying to be objective.

[malchior]

Ross Douthat says 1/6 wasn't an insurrection - "Why Jan. 6 Wasn’t an Insurrection"

Subscribers are expected to pay for this pseudointellectual slop? I'm not even bothering to quote the piece because it's that kind of hot, steaming garbage. The kind where the Times is itself too deeply embarrassed to have a comments section.

This comes a day after Bret Stephens wrote an equally shitty op-ed that basically framed Trump as the reaction to liberals going too far and then makes the worst, fact free bullshit case that ignores the Democrats have gotten more votes for several elections. It's just digital excrement but the NY Times is there to shovel it to the masses.

The NY Times would do itself a service if it just ejected the OpEd section and made it a separate publication. It's untenably bad.

[Victoria Raverna]

https://theintercept.com/2024/01/09/new ... ork-times/

THE NEW YORK Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times’s coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza showed a consistent bias against Palestinians, according to an Intercept analysis of major media coverage.

The print media outlets, which play an influential role in shaping U.S. views of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, paid little attention to the unprecedented impact of Israel’s siege and bombing campaign on both children and journalists in the Gaza Strip.

Major U.S. newspapers disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict; used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians; and offered lopsided coverage of antisemitic acts in the U.S., while largely ignoring anti-Muslim racism in the wake of October 7. Pro-Palestinian activists have accused major publications of pro-Israel bias, with the New York Times seeing protests at its headquarters in Manhattan for its coverage of Gaza –– an accusation supported by our analysis.

...

Overall, Israel’s killings in Gaza are not given proportionate coverage in either scope or emotional weight as the deaths of Israelis on October 7. These killings are mostly presented as arbitrarily high, abstract figures. Nor are the killings described using emotive language like “massacre,” “slaughter,” or “horrific.” Hamas’s killings of Israeli civilians are consistently portrayed as part of the group’s strategy, whereas Palestinian civilian killings are covered almost as if they were a series of one-off mistakes, made thousands of times, despite numerous points of evidence indicating Israel’s intent to harm civilians and civilian infrastructure.

The result is that the three major papers rarely gave Palestinians humanizing coverage. Despite this asymmetry, polls show shifting sympathy toward Palestinians and away from Israel among Democrats, with massive generational splits driven, in part, by a stark difference in news sources. By and large, young people are being informed of the conflict from TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter, and older Americans are getting their news from print media and cable news.

Biased coverage in major newspapers and mainstream television news is impacting general perceptions of the war and directing viewers toward a warped view of the conflict. This has led to pro-Israel pundits and politicians blaming pro-Palestinian views on social media “misinformation.”

Analysis of both print media and cable news, however, make it clear that, if any cohort of media consumers is getting a slanted picture, it’s those who get their news from established mass media in the U.S.

[malchior]

That's not surprising. My belief is that is mostly a result of media profit incentives. The US media often is focused heavily on megaphoning "authority" actors. Israel has a full PR presence but also the backing of Western governments which provides a wide variety of voices to quote, bring on the air, and bounce ideas off of.

On the other side in this conflict, there is relatively little. There is Hamas which they don't quote much outside the Health Ministry Casualty counts. Obviously Hamas doesn't even really deserve a voice either but the point is that Gazans have no voice speaking for them other than non-focused protests. So it's going to be inherently lopsided even without some "effort" to be biased. This is ultimately the problem with our media though. If there is no one to "access" and benefit from then you don't typically have a voice. They should be correcting for it but there is no profit in that.

[malchior]

Now it is Washington Post's turn to be silly.

Civil War talk in presidential contest reveals fresh divisions on race

If there is anything about these divisions...the word I wouldn't use is...fresh. The comments section is full of people openly mocking the piece which essentially somehow steps over how the Republicans have been dog-whistling all this shit since Nixon's southern strategy. Weird stuff.

[Carpet_pissr]

‘Weird’ is not the word I would use.

[waitingtoconnect]

Now it is Washington Post's turn to be silly.

Civil War talk in presidential contest reveals fresh divisions on race

If there is anything about these divisions...the word I wouldn't use is...fresh. The comments section is full of people openly mocking the piece which essentially somehow steps over how the Republicans have been dog-whistling all this shit since Nixon's southern strategy. Weird stuff.

There is a massive resurgence of racism by white peoples right now not just in the US.

It’s in Europe, the UK and Australia. You even have useful idiot children of immigrant politicians in the UK calling to get rid of immigrants… in Germany and Sweden the increasingly relevant far right parties are calling for the expulsion of all non whites.

I don’t know why the right are so worried about education: by all accounts this generation of boys is indoctrinated by men like Andrew Tate and align with what we now call “ conservative” views.

[Jaymann]

I must say it is chilling to see the happy talk TV news smiling while reporting on the Iowa Caucus, where a self avowed dictator wannabe is crushing the competition.

[hepcat]

I did chuckle when a correspondent at one of the locations talking about meeting a few Haley supporters. Then she paused and said she’d yet to meet any DeSantis supporters.

[LordMortis]

CBS was on this morning for the Iowa Caucus, as it was the channel on when I was watching football last night. It was "reporting" interviews with why youth is disaffected and not voting because they are ignored by both sides and nothing gets better. Maybe that's Iowa youth, but I swear to Pancake youth voting has been up and affecting change for six years running now. Ever since TFG took office and then with gasoline poured when the SC upended RvW. And their vote is what has been holding the line against "conserving" the 1950s and record wallstreet and private profiteering, I guess.

[Carpet_pissr]

I must say it is chilling to see the happy talk TV news smiling while reporting on the Iowa Caucus, where a self avowed dictator wannabe is crushing the competition.

So much this. I just happened to see my ABC affiliate's local news last night after the game, just because I didn't change the channel, and that was the first thing that struck me. And the news anchor was a black woman to boot.

OTOH what are we expecting? For smallish town local ABC news anchor to throw her career away and start going off script? Legit question. "It seems Democracy-crushing dictator wannabe Donald Trump has won in Iowa tonight, which is flabbergasting considering the horrific implications of such a win for 98% of Americans, and the future of our country."

[Pyperkub]

Will conservative shenanigans kill the BBC?

“Lucy Frazer’s midterm review reads like it was written for and by GB News,” he said. “The government should trust the BBC board and trust the BBC programme makers to understand impartiality. Rather than a war against the BBC, why is the culture secretary not defending the BBC as one of the great British institutions?”

Reading between the lines, it seems as if they want conservative complaints to shift and control BBC news coverage.

[Pyperkub]

I get it. Smartmatic will extract another few days' worth of cashola. The disappointing part for me is that I struggle to see how a media outlet could possibly be any more clearly guilty of perverting the truth for profit, and therefore this represents an approximation of the best accountability outcome possible under our system.

Since this accountability outcome sucks, it's disappointing.

Maybe not. Smartmatic also alleging possible criminal behavior by OAN now...

In the wake of the 2020 election, the president of the far-right network One America News sent a potentially explosive email to former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, with a spreadsheet claiming to contain passwords of employees from the voting technology company Smartmatic, according to court filings. ...

... The revelations were surfaced by Smartmatic as part of an effort to convince the judge in its case against OAN that the network is withholding key documents in the discovery process.

“Discovery from the (OAN) executive team is critical to establishing actual malice because the (OAN) executive team may have engaged in criminal activities to further the election fraud claims generally and Smartmatic fraud claims specifically,” Smartmatic lawyers wrote in a December court filing that mentioned the spreadsheet.

The company’s lawyers further alleged that, “discovery to date has also uncovered that certain members of the (OAN) executive team appear to have violated state and federal laws regarding data privacy in connection with promoting election fraud claims.”

[Pyperkub]

I've posted in this thread that papers should partner with local college papers, but this is beyond what I thought:

Student journalists in Iowa will now have more chances to hone their reporting skills while strengthening local news. The Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa’s independent student newspaper, has purchased two weekly local newspapers in the state, per an announcement on Monday.

Media company Woodward Communications sold the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and Solon Economist to the Daily Iowan in Iowa City. The papers will keep their respective staffs and operate from their current offices. They’ll continuing printing weekly editions on Thursdays, according to Daily Iowan executive editor Sabine Martin. The university’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication will help operate the papers to “provide student journalists with opportunities to contribute to the publications and gain local reporting experience.”

Quite possibly the best approach to make local news viable and good again (as compared to VC/Hedge funds buying papers and running them into the ground)...

[Pyperkub]

A good article on what the collapse of a number of journalism sites looks like from a writer.

I covered the NFL for three media outlets in the last calendar year: Football Outsiders, The Messenger, and The New York Times. Two of those outlets died. The third got rid of its entire sports section. I am forced to conclude that I am the grim reaper, harbinger of doom, the herald of the sports media apocalypse. Or maybe the industry’s just broadly and systemically broken, and I happen to have especially rotten luck. You can decide.

I agree with a lot of this. VC has been trying to go with the monopoly business approach to journalism, and IMHO, it's not a business which can be monopolized.

The media industry is a carcass getting picked clean by scavengers. The business models that made sense even five years ago no longer work. There are too many entrepreneurs seeking riches that were never there, too many SEO farms covering every web search with unreadable kudzu, too many social-media moguls treating links outside of their fiefdoms as an act of treason. The whole system is now so gamed that readers have a hard time finding good information or entertainment, while informative and entertaining people cannot find readership. It’s a hostile environment for consumer and producer, and it’s not getting better.

[stessier]

That was a pretty good read.