Now that everyone and their dog appears to be offering their own streaming service, we are right back to the "app store" days of competing on the basis of "total number of apps". Quantity over quality.
BlackberryOS and Windows Phone tried this tactic by offering incentives for developers to build on their platform. The result? A veritable deluge of Bible apps, dictionaries, websites wrapped as native apps, you name it. Both BB and Microsoft were so desperate to get the total app numbers up, they did close to no quality control, and pretty much every garbage app went through unless they had blatant copyright violations.
With user reviews eliminated from the big networks (I have Prime and haven't seen any user-written reviews in the UI), all we have to go on is the all-knowing algorithm to recommend what to watch next.
When I was still in school Microsoft would show up like once a semester and throw a "Build an app party". They'd give you like 90% of the code and files need to make a really simple slot machine app (no real money, if you ran out you tapped the get more coins button or something). It took like 15 minutes to finish the app, and if you published your version in the MS app store they'd give you like $600 in free MS hardware right then and there.
> Now that everyone and their dog appears to be offering their own streaming service, we are right back to the "app store" days of competing on the basis of "total number of apps". Quantity over quality.
As a not young anymore childless expat adult with an interest in non-popular topics, I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. While I'm surprised at the really bad quality (production but also just plain lies/propaganda) of some of the Prime content, I am happy that there's at least one streaming service were such content can be found because if that crappy content makes it to Prime it is a lot more likely that the non-popular stuff I really want is also there (at least, as compared to more heavily curated streaming services).
Of course, if your demographics more align with what is "popular" (and there's nothing wrong with that!) that may not matter and the negatives of having less filtering may be more of an issue. I will add that besides the weird/unpopular and low quality content, Prime tends to have a surprisingly good collection of (older) content, from Star Trek series to HBO shows (Sopranos, Tru Blood, Six Feet Under, etc), overall it's a pretty good service for the money and with the included 2 "days" (because lately it's more like 3 although sometimes it's next day) delivery it's unbeatable.
I'm almost done with streaming, its too much in general, and too much of it is trash masquarading as quality and faux FOMO. I'm taking verbal suggestions from friends only.
Time for a new pass time, watching TV isn't fun with this choice paralysis.
Perhaps Amazon is offering quantity over quality with prime video (and everything else) but there are numerous dedicated streaming services like HBO, Funimation, or Disney+ which have both large and high quality libraries.
Large and high quality is a strong word for Disney+. If you're not a parent or a fan of the Mandalorian it's pretty subpar compared to the variety of Netflix or Hulu.
the more (probably exclusive) videos there are, the more amazon prime subscriptions they sell... (of course that assumes amazon prime generates revenue)
It is far smaller a stage than an open internet has given people, some of whom use it for far worse things than either Amateur How-To's or Conspiracy Theories. The solution should be to education society, not lock down information flow to protect society. For kids it is a bit different, but that's on the parents to protect their child and no amount of technology is going to fully counteract neglectful parenting.
It's hard to say. I think it's more that society has changed and become less tolerant.
The sorts of G-philes we used to distribute without a care over BBSes in the 80's get people arrested today.
There was an article in the local newspaper a couple of months ago about a guy being arrested for sending someone bomb-making instructions over the internet. We did that all the time. Even plans for how to make a floppy disk explode inside someone's drive.
The Anarchist's Cookbook didn't cause mass terror in the 20th century. I wonder if it's even available in libraries anymore.
> I wonder if it's even available in libraries anymore.
I just checked my local library, and they currently have a copy on the shelves that I could check out. It doesn't even seem to be "adults only".
I've never actually seen a physical copy before (only photocopies of some pages that my friend asked me to "hold onto for him" and PDFs). Now you've inspired me to check it out next time I'm at the library.
I know for sure that the PDF of the 2000 version by the Jolly Roger is still available online though.
This a small perspective. We have experimented with free information vs locked down information over many hundreds of years. We consistently see that bad people take control over the information lock and use it to create tyranny and death.
I'm not convinced that we've done much at all to educate society about the technology that permeates our 2020 existence. The elementary, middle, high school offerings for computer science / engineering related classes are dismal. The current trend is to dumb everything down ("make convenient / easy") until it's accessible by everyone so that then everyone is ultimately left dependent on some company.
The biggest part of the experiment that has failed is our government run school system, so maybe we fix that rather than give the government more control.
Part of the conspiracy theorists’ standard self-defense toolkit is training their followers to believe that all mainstream sources of news, science and education are hopelessly compromised and should thus be studiously ignored.
How do you propose to educate someone who believes that?
A focus at the grade school level of using evidence to reach a conclusion instead of having a conclusion and backing it with evidence. For adults who already have their beliefs set, having someone close to them slowly analyze their beliefs helps.
Also, realizing that sometimes the conspiracy theorist are right. How to draw a distinction between secret CIA projects or NSA spying verses faking moon landings and contrails. Getting conspiracy theorist to focus on true conspiracies might be far easier than getting them to drop conspiracy theories in general.
This is one of the reasons I'm not in favor of much of the deplatforming that has been going on. It's not just that the mainstream sources are supposed to be compromised, but they are actively trying to silence the speaker. When YouTube, Facebook, etc. _actually do_ silence people (at least on their respective platforms), they now have proof of at least that claim.
> For kids it is a bit different, but that's on the parents to protect their child and no amount of technology is going to fully counteract neglectful parenting.
This is a bit harsh and naive. Given how easily it is to access the wide open internet these days, the amount of vigilance on the part of parents to avoid being "neglectful" like that is greatly increased. And that has a lot of negative side effects.
Yes, as a parent of multiple kids, it's been extremely difficult to keep tabs and set boundaries on this sort of thing that both keeps my kids from awful content and doesn't make them feel we're suffocating them. I was thrilled when I was able to take away my child's unfettered YouTube access, which I had to constantly monitor and curate, in favor of YouTube kids which has 99.99% of the time presented appropriate content. Though now my oldest is aging out of that walled garden, and we're back to stricter monitoring. It's hard. I want my son to be able to watch folks playing games he likes, get tips & strategies etc., but some of the language used... it's not great. He's old enough now that we can let him be exposed to it and use it as an opportunity to teach.
Other things are much more subtle & subversive than mere foul or sexually suggestive language though. Something like "f--- those carebear wuss players that help all the triggered snowflakes that want everything handed to them" I mean, even if you agreed with some of socio-political themes this suggests, the particular language used is one of social division, derision, and disdain. Not "virtues" I'd like to instill in my kids.
I would call it more fatalistic than naive. Even if we completely ignore cases related to technology we will find an overwhelming number of instances of children being harmed by neglectful parenting. Even if we ignored neglect and focused on active forms of child abuse, the numbers are horrendous.
This is not a problem caused by technology nor one that can be fixed by limits placed on technology. I fear too strong a focus on specific issues like kids having access to an unfiltered google when the harms of neglectful parents are far greater, and when we have decided that parental freedoms are worth the trade off.
>The solution should be to education society, not lock down information flow to protect society.
An extremely 90s tech utopian world view that time has proven to be misguided. And if you're not adjusting your thinking after the multi decade experiment where we tried it this way, then it's just an ideology and you're not really the educated and rational ubermensch you believe to be.
I'm hesitant to adjust my thinking because the alternatives are far from acceptable. I have an inherent distrust of authority to give them the power to regulate, and I would hope that those paying attention to the unequal application of law would have similar views. Do you really want the same government that gave Epstein his weekends only jail sentence for his convicted (convicted, not alleged like in many cases) crimes to also be in control of what information is allowed? I'd settle for conspiracy theorist any day of the week.
For concerned parents, be involved in your child's education and not depend upon the school to do the job. Overall schools focus too much on standardize testing, so if you fully leave the job to the schools you end up with good test takers who aren't going to do particularly well in many colleges.
When it comes to matters of ethics and morals, you definitely should not leave that to the school and I even suggest some subversion of the often authoritarian message I find schools teaching (personal experience with a pretty below average school district, others may have vastly different experiences).
>After inquiries from The Wall Street Journal, Amazon took down “Endgame” and two other videos from Mr. Jones—all self-uploaded, according to the company—citing violations of company policy. The company’s content policy focuses on issues pertaining to the sexually explicit, violence and copyright infringement, but it gives Amazon leeway to disallow anything it deems inappropriate.
Netflix has some similar content, like the recent series about Goop: https://collider.com/the-goop-lab-review-netflix-gwyneth-pal.... I'm disappointed by both companies. I can't imagine these kinds of moves drive revenue in a meaningful way, but they have a lot of (social) downside by legitimizing harmful views.
Yes, let's have Netflix and Amazon decide what is a legitimate view. If you don't like it don't watch it. Unless these films are actively calling for violence (I dont know if they are) I don't see what the problem is.
To be clear I think it's well within their right to publish whatever (legal) content they want to publish. But also well within subscribers' rights to react positively or negatively to these content choices.
FWIW I very rarely boycott anything, but I suspended my Netflix account when I learned about the Goop show. In my mind, promoting junk science is very dangerous because it leads people to pursue non-cures for problems that continue to escalate in the absence of legitimate treatments.
Both private bookstores and public libraries curate their offerings selectively. This isn't the Internet Archive, the equivalent to the Library of Congress or another institution that stores everything.
I don't know the details, but I believe the Internet Archive has some minimal filtering now as well, beyond their normal DMCA compliance. For a while they seemed to be the host of choice for extremist propaganda, ISIS videos and the like, but from what I've heard they did something to crack down on that.
Would you maintain that position if Netflix released a documentary vilifying vaccines and legitimizing the anti-vaxxer movement?
Countries are already seeing deaths related to the anti-vax movement[0], this kind of disinformation poses a legitimate threat to public health without calling for violence.
Yes, because they deserve to state their case like anybody else. If they're wrong, they'll be proven to be as much.
Personally, I'm vaccinated for all the major stuff of course, but I don't do flu shots. A friend of mine's daughter almost died years ago from I guess it was an allergic reaction. Another had a coworker at a hospital who still has trouble walking (last I talked to him) as a result of hers. Measles I can understand given the risk exposure from not getting it, but flu shots no thanks.
How dare someone provide an open forum and allow individuals to investigate and use their own critical thinking skills? It goes against the principles of our constitution.
You say that as though people aren't susceptible to influence form malicious actors spouting propaganda. It's pretty clear that the current state of affairs allows a greater degree of emotional and psychological manipulation than has been possible in the past. That rather undercuts your idea that rational people can bring their critical thinking skills to bear on it and cut through it. It's simply not how human psychology works.
All of which is somewhat besides the point and off topic from this particular issue: When Amazon Video started out, it was not an open forum-- it was not YouTube. Part of its appeal was that it was a somewhat curated selection of content. Watering that down with content that takes more time & mental effort to sift through the crap isn't really a great experience or what drew people to the platform. Believing Amazon shouldn't do that is hardly a blow against free speech or something.
I also fail to see how curated content somehow goes against the values of the constitution. Every news paper, book publisher, TV channel or other media outlet, ever, has exerted editorial discretion over the content they choose to make available. Believing that model to be superior to a "fire hose" approach is not inherently anti-constitutional.
It doesn't literally go against the constitution, but there are no open forums anymore as they've all resorted to deplatforming because they keep pushing this message you support, that they know better than the lowly masses. Even 4chan has been heavily mitigated. You are wrong if you think the people running mass media outlets have your best interests in mind when they decide which content is kosher and which is not. I'd rather filter through a lot of junk than not have access at all to the few valuable and truthful bits that get "caught" in the corporate filter as false positives.
> You say that as though people aren't susceptible to influence form malicious actors spouting propaganda
People are sheep and require benevolent shepherds. A viewpoint that has successfully been instituted throughout time. Who shall this aristocracy be? Those with the most potential liability and deepest pockets? Sure. I present you believe in Plutocracy, even if you profess not to, by your own circumspect explanations.
Unsurprisingly, this has been par for the US since always (more or less).
Stop acting like there's only one extreme or the other. It's a simplistic world view that ignores that most things exist in shades of grey. There can be reasonable places in between extremes, and defaulting to an extreme just shows that you lack imagination or willingness to work through hard problems.
> Stop acting like there's only one extreme or the other.
I have accurately described your views, which is how most of the US votes.
Hand waving in denial, is not uncommon. Good luck with that.
> It's a simplistic world view that ignores that most things exist in shades of grey
That's why it takes MULTIPLE steps to get to that point, which I went through. Take another look at my post.
"Do people need to be protected from other people's speech?" Yes, to some degree there needs to be watchers.
"who gets to decide what is 'acceptable'" The watchers are those with the most resources to watch the people.
> defaulting to an extreme just shows that you lack imagination
I present that you lack comprehension of your own viewpoint.
My "failure" is that I have not given you a solution that you find acceptable, which meets your expectations.
> You say that as though people aren't susceptible to influence form malicious actors spouting propaganda.
If that's the case, we'd have to shut down every news and media organization.
> Every news paper, book publisher, TV channel or other media outlet, ever, has exerted editorial discretion over the content they choose to make available.
That's the point. Is amazon a platform or a publisher. I think we've allowed major tech companies to be ambiguous for far too long. As a society, we should force the major tech companies to decide once and for all. If they want to be publishers fine, then they should be responsible for all the content. If they want to be a platform, then they shouldn't be allowed to censor and only take down illegal content.
These tech companies shouldn't be allowed to eat the cake and have it too.
Do you compare streaming services by their average video? I just like the ones that have the content I want to watch, extra crappy videos don't really seem to get in the way since I never notice them.
I judge services based on how difficult it is to find something entertaining to watch. Frequently on Amazon Prime I spend more time sifting through piles of trash than actually streaming content because aside from a small amount of decent original content it's a mess. Between that and content which is not included in the service but presented in search results I've pretty much given up on the service outside unless I know exactly what I'm looking for.
The other day I started to watch a pretty crappy documentary about the founding fathers. I was surprised how it could be part of prime video given its low-quality writing and filming. Now I understand, I guess Amazon is positioning the service at just above YouTube when it comes to quality.
YouTube is very heterogeneous. By far the highest quality content I’ve ever encountered has been on YouTube. You just have to know what to look for. The lowest common denominator is always going to suck.
When the media and establishment are repeatedly caught misleading the public, the result is the proliferation of conspiracy theories and a culture of distrust. Alex Jones isn't the answer, but neither is he the main problem. The problem is corruption in the mainstream media. That's far more pressing than grassroots videos that while probably incorrect at least challenge people to question what they're told.
I think there's a general and growing distrust of media that feeds into people like Alex Jones' popularity. I don't know how many of those people take him 100% seriously vs how many are just happy listening to an outsider that's taking shots at known corruption.
When the media and establishment are repeatedly caught misleading the public, the result is the proliferation of conspiracy theories and a culture of distrust
Conspiracy theories happen whether the media is trustworthy or not. They existed many hundreds of years before there was mass media.
There's just something about certain people that makes their brains click, "That logical thing doesn't make sense to me. But this crazy thing does. And I need to tell everyone about it."
The internet has enabled the third part of that like never before.
Before the internet, it was whackjobs in online fora. Before that they were on BBSes. Before that, shortwave radio. Before that, books, pamphlets, fly posters, leaflets, and handbills. Before that, they would just stand on street corners shouting.
Most of the non-electronic methods still exist and are used frequently. From the guy with the megaphone walking around the Chicago Loop bitching about the FBI in his brain to Screamin' Jesus on the street corner of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
The promise of the internet was to give everyone an "equal voice." We probably should have solved mental health first.
You might be surprised by some of the people who hold unconventional views (hint: they aren't all crazy people yelling into a megaphone, and many of them keep their views relatively quiet to avoid being ostracized). It's a spectrum; there are the incredibly naive people who only believe what is 'mainstream.' Then there are the paranoid people who will believe absolutely anything that challenges the 'mainstream' thinking on a subject.
The people with the most accurate view of reality lie somewhere in the middle and do the critical thinking for themselves. The reality is that conspiracies do and always have existed, and the mainstream today is very different than the mainstream 100 years ago, which was different 100 years prior, etc. (because those mainstreams were proven wrong on many levels, as our current one will be).
Ask yourself honestly: would you have been on the side of the Catholic Church in the Galileo inquisition, had you lived in that time with your personality?
Part of the problem is the very term "conspiracy theory" and what it actually means.
Back in the 60s after John F Kennedy was murdered, there were two broad schools of thought; that he had been murdered by a man acting alone (no conspiring) or he was murdered by a man[men] acting in coordination with others (conspiring.) Thus in this case you had people who believed the official narrative, and everybody else, who had theories "about conspiracies." This particular case seems to have been strong enough to effectively redefine the term "conspiracy" to mean any theory contrary to the official narrative.
The problem is that in other cases, such as 9/11, the official narrative is a theory about a conspiracy. As are all of the alternative theories. In the case of something like 9/11, literally everybody agrees the numerous perpetrators conspired with each other; the disagreement arises over who exactly those conspirators were. In the 'proper' sense of the term "conspiracy theory", everybody believes at least some conspiracy theories. But in this new modern sense of the term, "conspiracy theory" applies to only to those who contradict the officially endorsed explanation of events.
(Incidentally in the specific case of JFK, only a minority of Americans believe the official one-man narrative: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politi... Was it the mafia, the CIA, the Russians? Somebody else? Who fucking knows. But most people don't believe Oswald acted alone.)
Terminology is a surface issue, another (possibly larger) problem is the amount of 'conspiracies' that have actually been proven to be true over time. Worse, because some conspiracies have for-profit motives behind them, it taints any source who repeats such claims, "They've been paid off by..." Two obvious examples that most people believe now: fluoride is bad for you, and we had little to no justification to go to war in the middle east after 9-11.
The problem is trust, and many of the world's governments and corporations (I would probably argue most) have proven to be unworthy of the public trust.
Really sad bonus thought: If you see what happened in the aftermath of 9-11, and look at how much money is made from warfare - how much of a stretch do you think it is for an otherwise typical person to believe it's an inside job?
Having been raised in a charismatic Christian family, I suspect many of us would have sided with the religious authorities. Kids are so impressionable and it's hard to break out of a way of thinking when your whole community and identity is built around it.
I have a slightly different take on it. From what I have seen, conspiracy theorists, some of them at least, will see snippets of truth and will start to fill in the blanks. Their methods of communication are usually filled in with passion and emotion. The end result often looks "crazy", but has bits of truth that have to be sifted out. I've learned to pay attention to some of the nutters, because they may not really be entirely nuts. Rather, they may have serotonin balance issues and communication problems. I have found more often than not that they were right more or less, at least partially. Alex Jones is actually a prime example of this. Most of the things he has espoused for many years have actually turned out to be true, but when he communicates these ideas, he sounds really out there. I personally know a couple people just like him. It's the same story. They see a series of events. They try to put them together and are usually just a little off base. The real problem is how they convey the picture. I find that I have to calm them down and "bring them back to earth" to find out what they really saw.
> espoused for many years have actually turned out to be true
I would say some of the things that he premised on was true. But the idea he developed base on those things are nuts. it's not how he communicated them, it's just what it is.
(example not necessarily from Alex Jones, but just e.g)
US flag furled up on the moon (correct) -> like the wind blew on it (visual observation) -> it means the wind must have blown on it (fallacy) -> we never went to the moon.
Jet fuel cannot melt steel (maybe? correct) -> Therefore the fire it had on the world trade center cannot cause structural failure (does your chocolate not soften before it melts?) -> US did 911.
The premise can be true, the idea can still be bs.
For sure, there are a list of things he was way off base. I am just saying, there were many more things he was spot on and many of us thought he was just a nutter. My bigger concern around these folks is that individuals can exploit their characteristics by showing them snippets of true malfeasance, wait for them to get emotionally spun up and start making a fuss, then the malfeasance becomes something that nobody dare speak of, for fear of being associated with the "nutter". At least, if I were going to hide something big, that is probably one technique I would use. Let the nutter start spinning off the hinges and then nobody would dare talk about my evil plans.
Unfortunately, that kind of conspiracy theory isn't just reserved for isolated nutjobs. Trying to remain neutral about it, it is either the case that tens of millions of Americans believe in a conspiracy of scientists to promulgate a hoax about the climate, or tens of millions of Americans believe in a conspiracy of business interests to hide the reality of climate change.
That's not an ordinary difference of political opinion. One side or the other is engaging in conspiracy-theory thinking, at a vast level. (Or, I suppose, both.) I don't just mean that they're talking about a conspiracy, but applying all the hallmarks of paranoia, shifting goalposts, and bad faith that mark conspiracy theorists.
And that's just one example. It applies down the line, of many issues. This is the one that perhaps illustrates it best, but it's not mere partisanship. It's people needing to be "brought back to earth", as you said, but at a level involving many millions of people.
I made a point of not taking sides. I'm just pointing out that the problem is very large, regardless of who's right.
I'm also not proposing solutions. I'm sure there are many who would propose re-education camps -- that, too, is an indicator of the magnitude of the problem.
> The promise of the internet was to give everyone an "equal voice." We probably should have solved mental health first.
This idea that you're only allowed a platform once you've been "fixed" is exactly what pushes people towards conspiracy theories in the first place. It's a reaction to authoritarian mono-culture.
Crackpots and nutjobs have always been with us, their existence doesn't tell us anything about today vs yesterday. A claim that today is "more dishonest" than times in the past is also tough to substantiate.
The useful part of the debate today is if there is a responsibility for those who have ended up as potential gatekeepers to either help promote those people or to limit their audience by moderating platforms. Historically, the unhinged got distributed only as far as they could personally manage to coordinate; should we be handing bullhorns out to everyone? Free speech vs personal responsibility vs whatever other buzzword you like.
A claim that today is "more dishonest" than times in the past is also tough to substantiate.
It's like how PBS has been pounding in its promos for the last few months that "We're a country divided like never before." Well, not really.
Yes, American politics is terrible now, but it's nothing like back in the 1800's. Posting some of the campaign literature that was distributed back then would get you banned from any modern electronic medium today.
Eh, I'm ok with a little commercial puffery. It is an election year, after all. When the Olympics roll around this summer the promos are going to say "it's that time when America comes together".
The past 80 years include not just Vietnam but also the most significant legislative period of the Civil Rights movement. I'm not even that old but my dad was born before legal segregation was ended.
Right. If people think BLM is controversial, check out the Black Panthers. BLM just wants a kinder gentler capitalism, the Black Panthers wanted to overthrow the shit and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
My issue with conspiracy theory commercializers is that they don't give or promote the intellectual tools to "question what they're told", they just prompt people (primarily through appeals to emotion, especially fear and anger) and then turn it into a commercial product that justifies any lie. And there are real social effects from these conspiracy peddlers, like people who've lost their young children in a mass shooting receiving death threats and accusations that their dear child never existed and it's all a hoax.
I mean, I saw an anti-vaxxer post from social media that unknowingly suggested "a small piece of a virus instead of toxic chemicals" as an alternative to vaccines...
It would be one thing if Alex Jones and his ilk were actually challenging people to think critically and be skeptical, and look for evidence before reaching conclusions and to be aware of biases both external and internal. Those are useful values.
But they simply declare that the entirety of the mainstream narrative is a lie (and that, therefore, only the alternative can be trusted) and then tell you exactly what to believe and then eventually sell you gold coins to hide under your mattress for when the globalist feminazi lizard-men finally come for your guns and precious bodily fluids.
People like Alex Jones aren't helping anyone, certainly not honest skeptics, I don't understand the efforts I see to portray him and others like him as merely the loyal opposition telling truth to power, or something akin to a court jester. Ok. The mainstream media is biased and corrupt... but if someone thinks the mainstream media is more biased and more corrupt than much of the alt-conspiracy media, they're very much mistaken.
Can you give me an example of "media and establishment are repeatedly caught misleading the public"? Are there documented cases outside of Fox news? Its a genuine question.
I thought the rest of the main stream doesn't lie and if they realize what they reported is wrong they retract and issue and correction/apology as needed.
My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox, right wing talk radio and more so Trump now to discredit the good institutions and to bring their trust level down.
I can give an example from the New York Times relating to the Iraq War, I took it from wikipedia [1]:
In the buildup to the 2003 war, the New York Times published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller, helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material.[83] It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets.[84] The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq.
That was not "the media is lying". Miller used Bush administration sources and confirmed with an Iraqi source that turned out to be the source of the Bush info. Its disputed whether she was misled by one or both of these sources or perhaps one of the sources misled the other. That the administration would rely on this reporting, rather than their own CIA which was calling it into question, is a reflection on their deception not the media's.
It was bad reporting that was compounded by the editors not pushing back, as the article you cite goes on to say.
American media mostly got the story wrong, because they trusted the American government to be honest. But a lot of foreign media didn't get the story wrong, because they didn't blindly trust the American government.
I don't see being lied to as much of an excuse. It's their job to be skeptical, and they chose not to be.
MSM takes the same stance any time the US wants to go to war and, each time, the country invaded ends up worse off than it was under the dictator they had before.
It took the NYTs over 50 years to admit their/Walter Duranty's denial of the Holodomor was bullshit. Who is to say this is the only time a lie might go unchallenged in American media for decades?
* Harvey Weinstein was covered up by many in the media as detailed in Ronan Farrow's Pulitzer Prize winning piece in The New Yorker [1]
* ABC killed a story about Jeffery Epstein in 2015 in part to retain access to the royal family. Epstein continued to sex traffic children for 3 years after this report would have aired [2]
* The BBC covered up for Jimmy Savile's pedophila (and other horrors I won't reprint here) for decades. The head of the BBC during that time left right before the scandal came to light to become the current CEO of The New York Times [3]
There are many other examples but these are recent and well documented.
...and yet, it was the center of big, old liberal media that broke the Weinstein story, not some investigative citizen-youtuber.
And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
Even with Farrow's access and background he barely got the story out.
> And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
Correct, but my statement was about media trustworthiness. It doesn't really matter if people are keeping quite because they want to or because there's some super powerful individual that's coercing them to keep quiet, the result for the audience is the same. Why believe outlets that are covering up for the most heinous corruption and crimes imaginable? The media has a well earned reputation problem.
Also, I'm not sure why you want to make this a partisan argument. It's not, there's plenty of corruption to go around. I deliberately chose non-political examples of corruption.
From that link, it seems to be "rogue CNN contributor" rather than CNN - indeed, they forced her out 3 days after her leaking was revealed. Am I missing something that indicates it was a larger CNN issue above and beyond a single rogue contributor?
> Am I missing something that indicates it was a larger CNN issue above and beyond a single rogue contributor?
No, you aren't missing anything. No one says that CNN as a whole committed a grand conspiracy to assist Hillary with questions. However, each one of those "rogue CNN contributors" reflects poorly on the company as a whole, and the image of the whole media outlet as trustworthy suffers.
Not sure why this is downvoted. The DNC chair had to resign after her conspiracy to rig the election was leaked by Seth Rich.
CNN still up to the same tricks too. How did you like "Mr. Sanders, why did you say a woman can't be elected president?" "I never said that." "Senator Warren, how did you feel when Mr. Sanders told you a woman couldn't be president?". What the hell was that?
The Seth Rich conspiracy theory[1] has no factual basis in reality. It's a political smear to muddy the waters most likely started by Russian propagandists as cover to their hacking in our 2016 elections.
Look at mainstream media coverage of any topic that you are an actual expert in, and observe how wrong^ they get it. Now assume their reporting on other topics is as competent.
^ Wrong in terms of facts, bias, what they choose to report and choose to omit, who they cite as experts, and other aspects
> Can you give me an example of "media and establishment are repeatedly caught misleading the public"?
Look up every war we've been involved in. The media/establishment lied. Try Nayirah testimony if you want to get started. If you want more recent, look up the anti-venezuelan NYTimes piece by Joanna Hausmann, a minor youtuber. Why was she given a platform on the NYTimes? Oh because her father is an ousted former venezuelan central banker behind the coup attempts in venezuela. Did NYTimes mention this? Of course not. But then again, what more do we expect from the NYTimes which supported the first coup of Chavez. Why is an "objective" newspaper behind a coup attempt in a foreign country? Because the NYTimes was founded by bankers to support bankers interests.
Go look up the lies the media peddled on the syria war and the chemical attacks. Notice how they went quiet about that?
Look up the libya war. Look at the lies peddled about venezuela.
> My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox
That's because you watch too much CNN/MSNBC or read too much NYTimes/WashingtonPost. You have that impression because you've been brainwashed ( just like the poor fox news viewers you pity ). You aren't any better than what you disdain.
The "media is lying" is as old as the country.
"As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was a free speech proponent who hated the lying press.
We even have a famed period in history named for the lying press and journalists.
These predate fox news by more than a hundred years. You can generally trust the media to tell the truth about innocuous or unimportant events. The media, especially the highly regarded ones, lie about important events.
So if you are getting important news from dyspotian 1984 sounding "authoritative sources", know that you are being lied to.
And what about the rest of us non-Americans who have our respectjve local media misleading the public? Perhaps we all have our own mini Fox News entities that drive this narrative?
I don't intend to bring too much cynicism in here, but if you outright believe any media in current year, whether mainstream or alternative, you are being misled. Everyone has an agenda.
Or, to belabor the disease analogy, an opportunistic infection. Distrust makes it easier for otherwise fringe sources to spread beyond what would be expected in a healthy media environment.
I strongly suggest you learn more about the history of media. Your post has nostalgia for a time that never existed.
You may also wish to consider the notion that your perception of newfound media dishonesty has more to do with a well-known demagogue who has made it a mission to destroy all media outlets that do not fully support him than anything in the media.
On Firefox and Chrome the paywall is in full force in private mode. Not just you.
I'm not sure if disabling javascript still works. It used to.
Also, pasting the link into archive.is used to work, but I think that hole got plugged some months ago as well. [checking] Oh wait no, someone got it to work. Here:
Alex Jones didn't just say there are chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay. Alex Jones said the government was deliberately putting chemicals into the water as part of a chemical warfare operation to increase the homosexual population and reduce birthrates, and that the frogs turning gay was the proof.
It doesn't matter that he was a little bit wrong about the actual effect of the chemicals on amphibian sexuality, he was very wrong about his actual claim, that being that gay people are bioweapons in a secret program of mass human genocide.
While Alex Jones was undoubtedly wrong on that one, I believe the source of his misinformation didn't come out of nowhere. Which is exactly what the parent comment was trying to illustrate. Take a few pieces of truth, fill the gaps with wild imagination and emotionally charged responses, and you get Alex Jones and his content.
Back in the 90s, US Air Force Research Laboratory was indeed working on a halitosis bomb that would do exactly that - turn those impacted by it gay.[0] As far as the wikipedia page goes, it seems like they didn't succeed in producing an actual halitosis bomb (and I have zero reason to believe otherwise, but I bet some Alex Jones supporters might disagree with me here), however it was included on their 3 pages long proposal paper for possible nonlethal chemical weapons. Which proves that there was some research on it and that the intended purpose of the hypothetical "gay bomb" was to use it as a nonlethal chemical weapon.
Major news sources reported on the Bush Administration's claims that Iraq had WMD, which is what they should have done, and which is much different than the implication in your statement, that the source of those claims was the media itself.
Maybe does some actual investigative journalism or put emphasis on the fact that the Bush administration claims were unproven? US media wouldn't uncritically report the statements of the Russian government as truth and a similar standard should be applied to the US government. It isn't like this is something they wouldn't have been able to do. Nancy Pelosi admitted she knew the truth back then.
> I was Ranking Member on the Intelligence Committee even before I became part of the leadership of Gang of Four. So, I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. It just wasn't there.
> They had to show us now - to show the Gang of Four all the Intelligence they had. The Intelligence did not show that that - that was the case. So, I knew it was a - a misrepresentation to the public[1][2].
I, for one, welcome our new government overlords. Me and my family feel completely incapable of judging the truth or falsehood of claims based on evidence and testing hypotheses.
I'm not saying the government is always right, but are you saying you are? Have you tested the hypothesis that the earth is round? That we landed on the moon? Where does your line between self-evident and requiring testing lay?
BlackberryOS and Windows Phone tried this tactic by offering incentives for developers to build on their platform. The result? A veritable deluge of Bible apps, dictionaries, websites wrapped as native apps, you name it. Both BB and Microsoft were so desperate to get the total app numbers up, they did close to no quality control, and pretty much every garbage app went through unless they had blatant copyright violations.
With user reviews eliminated from the big networks (I have Prime and haven't seen any user-written reviews in the UI), all we have to go on is the all-knowing algorithm to recommend what to watch next.
It was great, I did it every semester.
As a not young anymore childless expat adult with an interest in non-popular topics, I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. While I'm surprised at the really bad quality (production but also just plain lies/propaganda) of some of the Prime content, I am happy that there's at least one streaming service were such content can be found because if that crappy content makes it to Prime it is a lot more likely that the non-popular stuff I really want is also there (at least, as compared to more heavily curated streaming services).
Of course, if your demographics more align with what is "popular" (and there's nothing wrong with that!) that may not matter and the negatives of having less filtering may be more of an issue. I will add that besides the weird/unpopular and low quality content, Prime tends to have a surprisingly good collection of (older) content, from Star Trek series to HBO shows (Sopranos, Tru Blood, Six Feet Under, etc), overall it's a pretty good service for the money and with the included 2 "days" (because lately it's more like 3 although sometimes it's next day) delivery it's unbeatable.
Time for a new pass time, watching TV isn't fun with this choice paralysis.
I'm not convinced the experiment we've performed over the past ~15 years is bearing this out.
The sorts of G-philes we used to distribute without a care over BBSes in the 80's get people arrested today.
There was an article in the local newspaper a couple of months ago about a guy being arrested for sending someone bomb-making instructions over the internet. We did that all the time. Even plans for how to make a floppy disk explode inside someone's drive.
The Anarchist's Cookbook didn't cause mass terror in the 20th century. I wonder if it's even available in libraries anymore.
I just checked my local library, and they currently have a copy on the shelves that I could check out. It doesn't even seem to be "adults only".
I've never actually seen a physical copy before (only photocopies of some pages that my friend asked me to "hold onto for him" and PDFs). Now you've inspired me to check it out next time I'm at the library.
I know for sure that the PDF of the 2000 version by the Jolly Roger is still available online though.
How do you propose to educate someone who believes that?
Also, realizing that sometimes the conspiracy theorist are right. How to draw a distinction between secret CIA projects or NSA spying verses faking moon landings and contrails. Getting conspiracy theorist to focus on true conspiracies might be far easier than getting them to drop conspiracy theories in general.
This is a bit harsh and naive. Given how easily it is to access the wide open internet these days, the amount of vigilance on the part of parents to avoid being "neglectful" like that is greatly increased. And that has a lot of negative side effects.
Other things are much more subtle & subversive than mere foul or sexually suggestive language though. Something like "f--- those carebear wuss players that help all the triggered snowflakes that want everything handed to them" I mean, even if you agreed with some of socio-political themes this suggests, the particular language used is one of social division, derision, and disdain. Not "virtues" I'd like to instill in my kids.
I would call it more fatalistic than naive. Even if we completely ignore cases related to technology we will find an overwhelming number of instances of children being harmed by neglectful parenting. Even if we ignored neglect and focused on active forms of child abuse, the numbers are horrendous.
This is not a problem caused by technology nor one that can be fixed by limits placed on technology. I fear too strong a focus on specific issues like kids having access to an unfiltered google when the harms of neglectful parents are far greater, and when we have decided that parental freedoms are worth the trade off.
An extremely 90s tech utopian world view that time has proven to be misguided. And if you're not adjusting your thinking after the multi decade experiment where we tried it this way, then it's just an ideology and you're not really the educated and rational ubermensch you believe to be.
When it comes to matters of ethics and morals, you definitely should not leave that to the school and I even suggest some subversion of the often authoritarian message I find schools teaching (personal experience with a pretty below average school district, others may have vastly different experiences).
Another successful shakedown.
FWIW I very rarely boycott anything, but I suspended my Netflix account when I learned about the Goop show. In my mind, promoting junk science is very dangerous because it leads people to pursue non-cures for problems that continue to escalate in the absence of legitimate treatments.
Countries are already seeing deaths related to the anti-vax movement[0], this kind of disinformation poses a legitimate threat to public health without calling for violence.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/28/samoa-measles-...
Personally, I'm vaccinated for all the major stuff of course, but I don't do flu shots. A friend of mine's daughter almost died years ago from I guess it was an allergic reaction. Another had a coworker at a hospital who still has trouble walking (last I talked to him) as a result of hers. Measles I can understand given the risk exposure from not getting it, but flu shots no thanks.
All of which is somewhat besides the point and off topic from this particular issue: When Amazon Video started out, it was not an open forum-- it was not YouTube. Part of its appeal was that it was a somewhat curated selection of content. Watering that down with content that takes more time & mental effort to sift through the crap isn't really a great experience or what drew people to the platform. Believing Amazon shouldn't do that is hardly a blow against free speech or something.
I also fail to see how curated content somehow goes against the values of the constitution. Every news paper, book publisher, TV channel or other media outlet, ever, has exerted editorial discretion over the content they choose to make available. Believing that model to be superior to a "fire hose" approach is not inherently anti-constitutional.
People are sheep and require benevolent shepherds. A viewpoint that has successfully been instituted throughout time. Who shall this aristocracy be? Those with the most potential liability and deepest pockets? Sure. I present you believe in Plutocracy, even if you profess not to, by your own circumspect explanations.
Unsurprisingly, this has been par for the US since always (more or less).
I have accurately described your views, which is how most of the US votes.
Hand waving in denial, is not uncommon. Good luck with that.
> It's a simplistic world view that ignores that most things exist in shades of grey
That's why it takes MULTIPLE steps to get to that point, which I went through. Take another look at my post.
"Do people need to be protected from other people's speech?" Yes, to some degree there needs to be watchers. "who gets to decide what is 'acceptable'" The watchers are those with the most resources to watch the people.
> defaulting to an extreme just shows that you lack imagination
I present that you lack comprehension of your own viewpoint.
My "failure" is that I have not given you a solution that you find acceptable, which meets your expectations.
If that's the case, we'd have to shut down every news and media organization.
> Every news paper, book publisher, TV channel or other media outlet, ever, has exerted editorial discretion over the content they choose to make available.
That's the point. Is amazon a platform or a publisher. I think we've allowed major tech companies to be ambiguous for far too long. As a society, we should force the major tech companies to decide once and for all. If they want to be publishers fine, then they should be responsible for all the content. If they want to be a platform, then they shouldn't be allowed to censor and only take down illegal content.
These tech companies shouldn't be allowed to eat the cake and have it too.
https://archive.is/1pzuJ
I think there's a general and growing distrust of media that feeds into people like Alex Jones' popularity. I don't know how many of those people take him 100% seriously vs how many are just happy listening to an outsider that's taking shots at known corruption.
Conspiracy theories happen whether the media is trustworthy or not. They existed many hundreds of years before there was mass media.
There's just something about certain people that makes their brains click, "That logical thing doesn't make sense to me. But this crazy thing does. And I need to tell everyone about it."
The internet has enabled the third part of that like never before.
Before the internet, it was whackjobs in online fora. Before that they were on BBSes. Before that, shortwave radio. Before that, books, pamphlets, fly posters, leaflets, and handbills. Before that, they would just stand on street corners shouting.
Most of the non-electronic methods still exist and are used frequently. From the guy with the megaphone walking around the Chicago Loop bitching about the FBI in his brain to Screamin' Jesus on the street corner of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
The promise of the internet was to give everyone an "equal voice." We probably should have solved mental health first.
The people with the most accurate view of reality lie somewhere in the middle and do the critical thinking for themselves. The reality is that conspiracies do and always have existed, and the mainstream today is very different than the mainstream 100 years ago, which was different 100 years prior, etc. (because those mainstreams were proven wrong on many levels, as our current one will be).
Ask yourself honestly: would you have been on the side of the Catholic Church in the Galileo inquisition, had you lived in that time with your personality?
On the other side, would you have been a patron of the charlatan John Taylor had you lived in his time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(oculist)
Back in the 60s after John F Kennedy was murdered, there were two broad schools of thought; that he had been murdered by a man acting alone (no conspiring) or he was murdered by a man[men] acting in coordination with others (conspiring.) Thus in this case you had people who believed the official narrative, and everybody else, who had theories "about conspiracies." This particular case seems to have been strong enough to effectively redefine the term "conspiracy" to mean any theory contrary to the official narrative.
The problem is that in other cases, such as 9/11, the official narrative is a theory about a conspiracy. As are all of the alternative theories. In the case of something like 9/11, literally everybody agrees the numerous perpetrators conspired with each other; the disagreement arises over who exactly those conspirators were. In the 'proper' sense of the term "conspiracy theory", everybody believes at least some conspiracy theories. But in this new modern sense of the term, "conspiracy theory" applies to only to those who contradict the officially endorsed explanation of events.
(Incidentally in the specific case of JFK, only a minority of Americans believe the official one-man narrative: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politi... Was it the mafia, the CIA, the Russians? Somebody else? Who fucking knows. But most people don't believe Oswald acted alone.)
The problem is trust, and many of the world's governments and corporations (I would probably argue most) have proven to be unworthy of the public trust.
Really sad bonus thought: If you see what happened in the aftermath of 9-11, and look at how much money is made from warfare - how much of a stretch do you think it is for an otherwise typical person to believe it's an inside job?
This is why I don't watch the news anymore.
I would say some of the things that he premised on was true. But the idea he developed base on those things are nuts. it's not how he communicated them, it's just what it is.
(example not necessarily from Alex Jones, but just e.g)
US flag furled up on the moon (correct) -> like the wind blew on it (visual observation) -> it means the wind must have blown on it (fallacy) -> we never went to the moon.
Jet fuel cannot melt steel (maybe? correct) -> Therefore the fire it had on the world trade center cannot cause structural failure (does your chocolate not soften before it melts?) -> US did 911.
The premise can be true, the idea can still be bs.
There is a ~40min video in my profile that is just footage from the day and mainstream technical talks afterwards.
CB hacks: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21057230
That's not an ordinary difference of political opinion. One side or the other is engaging in conspiracy-theory thinking, at a vast level. (Or, I suppose, both.) I don't just mean that they're talking about a conspiracy, but applying all the hallmarks of paranoia, shifting goalposts, and bad faith that mark conspiracy theorists.
And that's just one example. It applies down the line, of many issues. This is the one that perhaps illustrates it best, but it's not mere partisanship. It's people needing to be "brought back to earth", as you said, but at a level involving many millions of people.
That's the kind of talk that leads to re-education camps.
I'm also not proposing solutions. I'm sure there are many who would propose re-education camps -- that, too, is an indicator of the magnitude of the problem.
I'm actually quite short on ideas for solving it.
This idea that you're only allowed a platform once you've been "fixed" is exactly what pushes people towards conspiracy theories in the first place. It's a reaction to authoritarian mono-culture.
Unfortunately they wasted their credibility over the years and can’t be trusted to be reasonably unbiased and without agenda.
The useful part of the debate today is if there is a responsibility for those who have ended up as potential gatekeepers to either help promote those people or to limit their audience by moderating platforms. Historically, the unhinged got distributed only as far as they could personally manage to coordinate; should we be handing bullhorns out to everyone? Free speech vs personal responsibility vs whatever other buzzword you like.
It's like how PBS has been pounding in its promos for the last few months that "We're a country divided like never before." Well, not really.
Yes, American politics is terrible now, but it's nothing like back in the 1800's. Posting some of the campaign literature that was distributed back then would get you banned from any modern electronic medium today.
I mean, I saw an anti-vaxxer post from social media that unknowingly suggested "a small piece of a virus instead of toxic chemicals" as an alternative to vaccines...
But they simply declare that the entirety of the mainstream narrative is a lie (and that, therefore, only the alternative can be trusted) and then tell you exactly what to believe and then eventually sell you gold coins to hide under your mattress for when the globalist feminazi lizard-men finally come for your guns and precious bodily fluids.
People like Alex Jones aren't helping anyone, certainly not honest skeptics, I don't understand the efforts I see to portray him and others like him as merely the loyal opposition telling truth to power, or something akin to a court jester. Ok. The mainstream media is biased and corrupt... but if someone thinks the mainstream media is more biased and more corrupt than much of the alt-conspiracy media, they're very much mistaken.
I thought the rest of the main stream doesn't lie and if they realize what they reported is wrong they retract and issue and correction/apology as needed.
My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox, right wing talk radio and more so Trump now to discredit the good institutions and to bring their trust level down.
In the buildup to the 2003 war, the New York Times published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller, helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material.[83] It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets.[84] The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
It was bad reporting that was compounded by the editors not pushing back, as the article you cite goes on to say.
I don't see being lied to as much of an excuse. It's their job to be skeptical, and they chose not to be.
The NYT got something wrong! 17 years ago! And that's why... OP no longer believes in globular world theory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
* Harvey Weinstein was covered up by many in the media as detailed in Ronan Farrow's Pulitzer Prize winning piece in The New Yorker [1]
* ABC killed a story about Jeffery Epstein in 2015 in part to retain access to the royal family. Epstein continued to sex traffic children for 3 years after this report would have aired [2]
* The BBC covered up for Jimmy Savile's pedophila (and other horrors I won't reprint here) for decades. The head of the BBC during that time left right before the scandal came to light to become the current CEO of The New York Times [3]
There are many other examples but these are recent and well documented.
1. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove...
2. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abc-news-amy-robach-jeffrey-e...
3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/30/jimmy-...
And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
> And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
Correct, but my statement was about media trustworthiness. It doesn't really matter if people are keeping quite because they want to or because there's some super powerful individual that's coercing them to keep quiet, the result for the audience is the same. Why believe outlets that are covering up for the most heinous corruption and crimes imaginable? The media has a well earned reputation problem.
Also, I'm not sure why you want to make this a partisan argument. It's not, there's plenty of corruption to go around. I deliberately chose non-political examples of corruption.
Edit: source for the downvoters [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Brazile#Sharing_debate_q...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/nick-s...
No, you aren't missing anything. No one says that CNN as a whole committed a grand conspiracy to assist Hillary with questions. However, each one of those "rogue CNN contributors" reflects poorly on the company as a whole, and the image of the whole media outlet as trustworthy suffers.
CNN still up to the same tricks too. How did you like "Mr. Sanders, why did you say a woman can't be elected president?" "I never said that." "Senator Warren, how did you feel when Mr. Sanders told you a woman couldn't be president?". What the hell was that?
The Seth Rich conspiracy theory[1] has no factual basis in reality. It's a political smear to muddy the waters most likely started by Russian propagandists as cover to their hacking in our 2016 elections.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Conspiracy...
If you think the "main stream doesn't lie" you are extremely naive
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728?s=...
^ Wrong in terms of facts, bias, what they choose to report and choose to omit, who they cite as experts, and other aspects
Look up every war we've been involved in. The media/establishment lied. Try Nayirah testimony if you want to get started. If you want more recent, look up the anti-venezuelan NYTimes piece by Joanna Hausmann, a minor youtuber. Why was she given a platform on the NYTimes? Oh because her father is an ousted former venezuelan central banker behind the coup attempts in venezuela. Did NYTimes mention this? Of course not. But then again, what more do we expect from the NYTimes which supported the first coup of Chavez. Why is an "objective" newspaper behind a coup attempt in a foreign country? Because the NYTimes was founded by bankers to support bankers interests.
Go look up the lies the media peddled on the syria war and the chemical attacks. Notice how they went quiet about that?
Look up the libya war. Look at the lies peddled about venezuela.
> My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox
That's because you watch too much CNN/MSNBC or read too much NYTimes/WashingtonPost. You have that impression because you've been brainwashed ( just like the poor fox news viewers you pity ). You aren't any better than what you disdain.
The "media is lying" is as old as the country.
"As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was a free speech proponent who hated the lying press.
We even have a famed period in history named for the lying press and journalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
These predate fox news by more than a hundred years. You can generally trust the media to tell the truth about innocuous or unimportant events. The media, especially the highly regarded ones, lie about important events.
So if you are getting important news from dyspotian 1984 sounding "authoritative sources", know that you are being lied to.
I don't intend to bring too much cynicism in here, but if you outright believe any media in current year, whether mainstream or alternative, you are being misled. Everyone has an agenda.
You may also wish to consider the notion that your perception of newfound media dishonesty has more to do with a well-known demagogue who has made it a mission to destroy all media outlets that do not fully support him than anything in the media.
I'm not sure if disabling javascript still works. It used to.
Also, pasting the link into archive.is used to work, but I think that hole got plugged some months ago as well. [checking] Oh wait no, someone got it to work. Here:
http://archive.is/1pzuJ
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2842049/
It doesn't matter that he was a little bit wrong about the actual effect of the chemicals on amphibian sexuality, he was very wrong about his actual claim, that being that gay people are bioweapons in a secret program of mass human genocide.
Back in the 90s, US Air Force Research Laboratory was indeed working on a halitosis bomb that would do exactly that - turn those impacted by it gay.[0] As far as the wikipedia page goes, it seems like they didn't succeed in producing an actual halitosis bomb (and I have zero reason to believe otherwise, but I bet some Alex Jones supporters might disagree with me here), however it was included on their 3 pages long proposal paper for possible nonlethal chemical weapons. Which proves that there was some research on it and that the intended purpose of the hypothetical "gay bomb" was to use it as a nonlethal chemical weapon.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb
> I was Ranking Member on the Intelligence Committee even before I became part of the leadership of Gang of Four. So, I knew there were no nuclear weapons in Iraq. It just wasn't there.
> They had to show us now - to show the Gang of Four all the Intelligence they had. The Intelligence did not show that that - that was the case. So, I knew it was a - a misrepresentation to the public[1][2].
[1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/12/10/1904681/-Impeach...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMwKg4GhYh0
But they also extremely inefficient, murder their own people and intentionally hide their corruption and mistakes.
I'm not sure what is best. Maybe middle of the road.
The problem isn’t being ignorant; it’s being certain of things that turn out not to be true.
Unfortunately, this appears to be most of what people have been led to believe.