patrick.net

https://nitter.net/johndefeo/status/1494000664078344206?source=patrick.net#m

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare many shortcomings and frailties in our society, but for me, none has been more damaging than the collapse of objective journalism.

I've worked in newsrooms for most of my career; I'd like to share how my experiences explain my view:

First, let me say that this thread is not an indictment of journalists, but rather an indictment of a system that produces bad journalism. The strange thing about systems is that they perpetuate and defend themselves, even when the participants of the system do not agree.

Yes, there are bad journalists. I should know: I was one of them. But, I had the benefit of good role models early in my career. I'll never forget the time I presented a single-source article to my editor. He said "What the fuck is this, an advertisement?"


Bringing me to:

Unreasonable Story Counts:

On average, the journalists that I've worked with had an expectation of producing 3-4 stories per day and one editor had 4-5 writers beneath.

This was a corporate demand, not an editorial one, and it does not allow time for top quality work.


Lack of Technical Editors:

Editors with a STEM background or a specific technical speciality are expensive and in short supply. I've seen a single technical story that required approximately one week of editing time. Many publications cannot afford this.


Words Edited, Numbers Not:

In the absence of a technical editor, many stories are edited for clarity, but not for data integrity. The results are most often seen when millions/billions/trillions are confused, or when bad metric conversions slip by.


Pageview Targets:

In addition to story counts (see #4 above), many journalists are encouraged (or directly incentivized) to reach pageview targets. Doing so has an impact on story selection (see #8 below).


Inefficacy of Straight News:

A story that is a plain statement of facts presented without sensationalism, will, on average, receive 400-1,200 visits. This is a guaranteed financial loss for an ad-supported news website.


Efficacy of Emotional Manipulation:

To increase readership of a straight news story, there are emotional triggers that can be leveraged. E.g. Headlines that include "Why You Should..." or "Why We Must..." Writers learn these tactics by exposure, or are taught directly.


Search Engine Optimization:

Many organizations rely on search engine traffic to sustain financial viability. I worked in this field for years and I believe that it is diametrically opposed to accountable journalism. Two major reasons listed below:


Confirmation Bias in Story Selection:

People who use search engines are, with their search data, broadcasting what they want to read. It is reverse broadcasting. News organizations get the message and prepare content with higher odds of success.


Rewrites for Marketability:

Reporters and editors are losing control of their own words, even within the body content of articles. Some of the articles that I wrote years ago have been edited to include marketing buzzwords and dubious links.


Make What We Sell:

A media sales team, left unchecked, will close almost any deal that will result in financial benefit for the sales team (not the news organization). As a result, journalists are forced to create content to fulfill questionable campaigns.


Bullying From Sales:

I once assigned a story that, unbeknownst to me, called into question the business model of an advertiser. The head of sales screamed at me in front of the entire newsroom. Luckily, my editor defended me. Not all do.


Bullying From External PR:

I once published the compensation packages of highly-paid CEOs. It was a matter of public record, yet a powerful PR executive (who represented one of those CEOs) demanded that the story be retracted and for me to be fired.


Bullying From Big Tech:

I've seen companies like Google threaten to remove major revenue sources from a news organization unless a particular story was unpublished. The reasons were often silly (like an elbow that looked like a breast), but the implications are sinister.


Bullying From Lawyers:

Some of the best journalism that I've seen firsthand was responded to with massive 8-figure lawsuits. Not every news organization has legal protections, insurance and a general counsel who stands behind good journalism.


Violent Threats:

In addition to lawsuits (see #17 above), some of the best journalism that I've seen firsthand was responded to with threats of death or rape. Credible or not, these threats are terrifying and they take an emotional toll.


Threat of Revoked Access:

Invitations to conferences and press briefings are in short supply. It can take years to earn an invite. On the other hand, a single critical story may result in revoked credentials and a complete blackballing of a journalist or publication.


Literal Lack of Boundaries:

Many newsrooms have open floor plans that can result in undue (and often, unintended, pressure).

E.g. A CEO leans on the desk of a 21-year old reporter and asks why hasn't __ been covered yet.

That story is often written, like it or not.


Removal of Comment Sections:

To mitigate threats and abuse (see #18 above), many websites have removed comment sections. There are unintended consequences. Almost every major error that I've corrected was first exposed to me in the comments on an article that I published.


Corrections Kill Momentum:

When a correction is added to the top of a story (even something as innocent as mis-spelling of a name), the velocity of pageviews and social sharing falls precipitously. I have measured this directly.


Corrections Are Embarrassing:

"Soft corrections" are a way to avoid retraction. I did it early in my career. E.g. I made a mistake in my bond math; a reader writes "This doesn't make sense unless it's a zero-coupon bond." Me: "Er, yeah, that's what I meant." I didn't.


Corrections Therefore Buried:

Should a reader be so lucky that a story is corrected, the new information is likely to be viewed 1-2% as often as the misinformation. (I have measure this directly). I.e. Bad info gets 50-100x the exposure that the good does.


Inability to Hire Talent:

I have twice tried to hire someone who was significantly more talented than I was. I had no problem with an employee earning more than me, but my company did. It makes no sense: Winning teams don't pay their coaches more than MVPs. Media does.


The "Shock Jock" Exception:

Top-notch reporters and data journalists struggle for competitive pay (see #25 above), but many newsrooms will offer big bucks to blowhard columnists. It may result in reporters taking harder (and less objective) stances.


Sensational Feedback Cycle:

Sensational stories often get sensational pageviews, which triggers more rewards from related content algorithms via companies like Outbrain and Taboola.

When sensationalism is rewarded, objectivity is punished.


Effects of Apathy:

This thread shows how journalists have suffered abuse by a thousand cuts. It's no surprise that cheap sourcing results in sensational stories that are too bountiful to correct:

johnwdefeo.com/articles/deep…

johnwdefeo.com/articles/seo-…

johnwdefeo.com/articles/goog…


The U.S. press has rushed, flubbed and left uncorrected many COVID-19 topics: Origin thesis, aerosols, masking, comorbidities, seasonality, natural immunity, With/From, scientific dissent, clinical trial parameters, censorship, bias risks, myocarditis, kid's mental health.


This thread is about reasons, not excuses.

Journalists have printed and amplified demonstrably false statements made by politicians and public officials. Yet, to my mind, it is journalists who have the best platform and incentive to set the record straight.

Patrick says

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare many shortcomings and frailties in our society, but for me, none has been more damaging than the collapse of objective journalism.

This is great.

Patrick says

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare many shortcomings and frailties in our society, but for me, none has been more damaging than the collapse of objective journalism.

No, objective journalism did not collapse with Covid, it is that the long on-going lack of objectivity was undeniably exposed.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10511877/NYT-editorial-board-backs-Freedom-Convoys-right-protest.html?source=patrick.net

Now NYT backs the truckers: Editorial Board says 'allowing nonviolent protest is important in a polarized society' and reminds Trudeau that he supported farmers blocking highways in India for a full year
New York Times editorial board supported the rights of the truckers to protest
Essay said protest snarling Ottawa 'ranks as a nuisance' in the broader scheme
Pointed out that Trudeau supported farmers blocking roads in India for a year
Meanwhile, Trudeau is reportedly preparing to invoke emergency powers

What, a glimmer of integrity from the NY Times? How long before Klaus Schwab has this squashed?

MSM have been displaying 'deception exhaustion' for a while. When you report on a shifting reality, you have an infinite palette. When you make shit up according to a programmed screed from calcified psychopaths, you have nothing to build on and eventually you start publishing absurdities contradicting absurdities designed to hold up previous absurdities. It's why we are in the bizarre attribution phase where they link junk fiction with other junk fiction.

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-february-20-2022?source=patrick.net

The CDC and mainstream media want you to know that only large Republican gatherings are superspreader events, large gatherings of Democrats could not possibly lead to virus transmission

The CDC and mainstream media continue to slide down the slippery slope toward declaring that Democrats are the master race and all Republicans are disease-carrying untermenschen. How else to explain the tortured logic whereby BLM protests and anime/furry conventions are declared not to be superspreader events but the motorcycle rally in Sturgis and Trump campaign rallies are deemed superspreader events?

‘Democrats good’:

CNN: Black Lives Matter protests have not led to a spike in coronavirus cases, research says
NY Times: A New York City anime convention was not a superspreader event, a C.D.C. study finds
‘Republican bad’:

Washington Post: Sturgis motorcycle rally linked to more than 100 coronavirus infections amid delta surge
CNBC: Trump campaign rallies led to more than 30,000 coronavirus cases, Stanford researchers say
If you click through and read any of these articles you’ll see that they are filled with preposterous junk science designed to fit a pre-determined conclusion.

Progressivism is now characterized by Bougie Supremacism that sorts people into a moral hierarchy based on their obedience to Pharma.

Patrick says

How does anyone fall for such obvious gaslighting?

It's quite simple:

"We have journalistic freedom - it isn't possible they could ALL be lying to me".

Well, we don't have journalistic freedom. That's just in the Constitution - but it's just a goddamned piece of paper.

People can't believe our "mainstream media" is ALL propaganda. ALL of it is. They can't accept that as being true, but it is.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-neoliberal-war-on-dissent-in?source=patrick.net

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government's use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West's official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

richwicks says

Well, we don't have journalistic freedom. That's just in the Constitution - but it's just a goddamned piece of paper.

Yes we do. And they're free to Propagandize, which is what they do.

Imagine if we had Equal Time laws for newscasts. That they had to devote 1/3rd of an opinion segment to the other side (not just uniparty members agreeing across the aisle, but actual people who disagreed with the opinions).

AmericanKulak says

Imagine if we had Equal Time laws for newscasts. That they had to devote 1/3rd of an opinion segment to the other side (not just uniparty members agreeing across the aisle, but actual people who disagreed with the opinions).

No I don't think this is a good idea actually. You just end up with a false dichotomy instead. To give "balance" the argument could be centered around WHY we should go to war with country X, and whether we should wouldn't even be considered for example. That's our two parties.

I've experienced direct censorship myself. Google cut off my account. THAT'S how they engage in censorship now, and you know why they are doing this?

It's because they are losing. Posts are deleted, they are shadowbanned, people and organizations are removed from search engines, propagandists like CNN, Fox, MSNBC etc are promoted as "most popular" on Youtube even though they aren't, people are unsubscribed without their knowledge and consent from news feeds, email doesn't show up because it's been blocked...

And they just get weaker and weaker and weaker. ALL they had to do, is not be such fucking pieces of shit. I don't care if somebody has a billion dollars, or really even care how they got it - that would be a pain in the ass to have, but even though they have enough money for anything they could possibly imagine, they have to fuck with everybody else. They need to start wars, they have to create culture wars, they have to control thinking, they have dumb down education, they have to promote propaganda - it's not that they HAVE to do this to retain their positions - but they do. They're just psychopathic assholes.

People aren't pissed off that they are rich and power, they're pissed off because they purposely fuck with everybody else and the more they fuck with people paradoxically, the weaker their position becomes. I mean, Bill Gates is trying to get everybody to get a worthless (at best) vaccine. There goes his reputation for running a charity and why is he doing this? He's just an asshole, that's why.

richwicks says

People aren't pissed off that they are rich and power, they're pissed off because they purposely fuck with everybody else and the more they fuck with people paradoxically, the weaker their position becomes. I mean, Bill Gates is trying to get everybody to get a worthless (at best) vaccine. There goes his reputation for running a charity and why is he doing this? He's just an asshole, that's why.

Dark Truth I've realized from the History of Byzantium, Russia, France, Venice, etc: Rich Fucks want their way in all things. Byzantium lasted so long because of the Emperors who put the rich in their place, esp. since they were often Magnates who knew how their own colleagues thought.

We need to get the rich to hate and fuck with each other, a balance of power, if you will.

https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/thinking-points-02-22-2022?source=patrick.net

Parallel narrative structures

First principles: there is no such thing as an organic “news” story these days. If a story appears in the NY Times or in the mainstream media it’s because the story was packaged and placed there by a PR firm, organized campaign, or government body.

So it’s more than a little weird that the mainstream media is now focused on the major themes that we have raised — censorship, the disenfranchisement of huge sections of the population, the rise of fascism, and the possibility of civil war — but they live in this bizarro opposite world and so they project all of the things that they are doing onto us.

For example, take a look at this recent Op Ed in the NY Times

“You Just Can’t Tell the Truth About America”
I read that headline and thought — right on! Exactly! We just cannot tell the truth about how the pharmaceutical industry has taken over all aspects of government and the mainstream media!

Then I read the first paragraph and my cheers grew even louder:

There is a dangerous censoriousness pulsing through American society. In small towns and big cities alike, would-be commissars are fighting, in the name of a distinct minority of Americans, to stifle open discussion and impose their views on the community at large. Dissenters, when they speak out, are hounded, ostracized and sometimes even forced from their jobs.

And I’m thinking to myself FINALLY someone understands what we’re going through with all of the censorship of scientific information online by social media companies who are not-so-secretly working for the cartel.

Alas, as you probably already guessed, it was not to be. The article never mentions the vast Stasi network that has been set up by the Biden administration, a wide range of astroturf nonprofits, and corrupt academics to censor anyone who criticizes the cartel. The article never once mentions the fact that hundreds of thousands of conservatives are banned from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram because they dared question the cartel. Instead the Op Ed takes issue who parents who get too involved in school board debates over textbooks about history and sex.

The headline and the emotional valence of the article were our issue — too much censorship! — flipped around, targets changed, and directed back at us.

And it’s not just that article. It’s everywhere. Take this recent article by David Remnick in the New Yorker that got a lot of attention:

Is a Civil War Ahead?
A year after the attack on the Capitol, America is suspended between democracy and autocracy.

And I’m thinking, EXACTLY! — Vaccine Apartheid in places like NY, Chicago, Boston, and SF has polarized our country; it’s causing families to have to flee Pharma slavery in blue states and move to the freedom of red states; partition seems likely, civil war is a definite possibility; Florida would have already declared independence except for the the fact that Ron DeSantis has a great chance of being elected President in 2024...

Nope, that’s not what the article is about at all. It’s all about Donald Trump, the January 6 insurrection, and how Republicans are evil.

In addition there are now heaps of stories about Republican disenfranchisement of minority voters even as Democratic mayors spent the last year setting up Vaccine Jim Crow that denied the full rights of citizenship to upwards of 75% of young Black Americans.

And there are heaps of stories about the rise in authoritarianism and fascism on the right, even as Democrats were setting up Pharma fascism and purging the police, military, education, and medical professions of their political opponents.

In all of this, even though they are stealing our themes, not once do these mainstream writers ever acknowledge that there is an equal and opposite argument on the other side where people are just as upset, if not more, and usually for valid reasons.

And if we operate from the first principles mentioned at the top of this section (that all stories are scripted to serve a larger narrative purpose) then it seems that Pharma knows exactly the issues and concerns that we are raising and they have set up a parallel narrative structure in the attempt to cancel out our voices. It’s almost like a noise cancelling machine — they are putting out the equal and opposite sound wave in the attempt to silence our message. Wild.

When I was a kid, they took me to the NBC Building in NYC.

I was shocked to discover the "Washington" Desk was a few feet from the "Main News Center in NYC" desk on the set. Not in DC.

This was around 1990.

AmericanKulak says

I was shocked to discover the "Washington" Desk was a few feet from the "Main News Center in NYC" desk on the set. Not in DC.

LOL! Kind of like Biden's luxurious Ikea desk on his little set. Some rumors state that because White House and DC are largely empty, most command decisions and guv department decisions are coming from offices unknown in NYC, not DC.

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/propaganda-corporatism-and-the-hidden?source=patrick.net

The Trusted News Initiative (TNI): Is a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) led organization which has been actively censoring eminent doctors, academics, and those with dissenting voices that contravene the official COVID -19 narrative. Anything contrary to this narrative is considered disinformation or misinformation and will be deleted, suppressed or de-platformed. Misinformation and disinformation are considered anything not aligned with the World Health Organization and/or the regional Public Health Authority-approved “truth”. In the case of the USA – that “truth” is established by Anthony Fauci, the CDC and the FDA. The TNI uses advocacy journalism and journals to promote their causes. The Trusted News Initiative is more than this though; if you go back to Hitler’s basic principles, the members of the TNI are using these core principles to control the public. The known TNI partners include: Associated Press, AFP; BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook (whose founders fund article being written for the The Atlantic), Financial Times, First Draft, Google, The Hindu, Microsoft, New York Times, Reuters, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Twitter, You Tube, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post.

No organization which is part of the criminally fraudulent "Trusted News Initiative" should ever be trusted again. They have completely burned all of their credibility.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/?source=patrick.net

Corporate Media’s Top Trending Ukraine Stories Turn Out To Be Complete Fakes.
The stories have also been peddled by so-called conservative representatives and news networks, none of which have issued corrections yet.

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/see-how-the-media-lies-about-what?s=r&source=patrick.net

See how the media lies about what happened in New Zealand yesterday. So why believe a word they say about Ukraine?
Riot cops used gas and fists to clear Parliament grounds of peaceful protesters—and "our free press" MAKES UP scenes of mob violence AGAINST the cops

https://notthebee.com/article/media-outlets-want-to-protect-your-kid-from-being-stressed-out-about-the-ukraine-situation-which-is-weird-because-weve-spent-the-last-two-years-telling-them-theyre-gonna-kill-their-grandmas-w?source=patrick.net

For seven years the media has been lying to us about Trump and Russia. Suddenly they are telling the truth about Russia?

https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/advocacy-journalism-is-propaganda?s=r&source=patrick.net

To insure that favorable stories about the organization and its mission were printed, the “journalist” and the marketing specialist would consult with their clients (in this case “Aeras”), and learn what story the organization wanted to be told in a major print publication. An article pushing the story would then be crafted, all of the necessary background assembled to meet whatever editorial review standards were likely to be encountered, and this pre-baked work product would be fed to some “journalist” working for the targeted publication. Free work product, no labor required, what’s not to like? My first “you are not in Kansas any more” moment concerning modern journalism was when I saw this process used to “place” an article into “The Economist”, which I had naively believed operated as an independent arbiter of truth. Silly me. ...

And now, thanks to a FOIA request from BLAZE media, we know that the US Government has paid over a billion US dollars to the legacy media to promote advertising propaganda about the COVID vaccines as safe and effective.

In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.

Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a "comprehensive media campaign," according to documents TheBlaze obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines. The government also relied on earned media featuring "influencers" from "communities hit hard by COVID-19" and "experts" like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.

Welcome to 21st century media warfare. Waged by our government on you.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/review-the-federal-government-paid-media-companies-to-advertise-for-the-vaccines?source=patrick.net

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/media-turned-russia-war-ukraine-trump-redux/?source=patrick.net

There are two things to worry about here. The first is the amazing speed with which a massive narrative can be forced into American brains in a coordinated fashion. Ukrainian propaganda sucked all of the oxygen from the room so quickly it should scare us. The second thing to fear is how quickly American partisan political forces were able to hijack the initial anti-Russian narrative and repurpose it into a slightly revised version of 2016’s “Trump is a Russian asset.” No matter that that narrative has been debunked as Clinton-made propaganda, the story line today is somehow that Trump and Putin are working together to destroy Ukraine on their way to ending American democracy.

Trump has nothing to do with Putin, or Ukraine, and the latter two have nothing to do with American democracy. As in Orwell’s world, our thoughts are no longer our own. We are told how to think, and groomed how to vote.

https://www.hennessysview.com/p/whatever-happened-to-covid-19?s=r&source=patrick.net

You got that right: Media, including Fox News, read HHS propaganda as if it were legitimate news throughout the pandemic. They were paid to read these ads but did not disclose they were ads. That’s fraud, and it’s against the law.

Patrick says

That’s fraud, and it’s against the law.

Propaganda is no longer against the law.

Not that our government has ever followed the law anyhow.

I really have no sympathy for people still believing our "news" after it lied us into 3 fucking wars, probably 4.

Lol, "disinformation".

They need to come up with a new term for truths which damn the political left. Just calling truth "disinformation" over and over is not convincing anyone.