🐱 Interesting clickbait, op-eds, fluff pieces and other smaller stories
- Thread starter CatParty
- Start date
CatParty
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
So now the average joe in New York has another group of people to compete with when it comes to the job market... pot heads
Billy Beer
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2021
James Michael Tyler: Friends stars show 'gratitude' for Gunther actor
Jennifer Aniston says the show "would not have been the same" without the late James Michael Tyler.
www.bbc.co.uk
Gunther from friends has died after a long battle with prostate cancer. The strange bit is the wording on the bbc article:
You mean Men. Men have prostates. Only men.
Bear this in mind that Movember is coming up in just over a week. Movember is where people in the UK grow a tash - the gayer the better - to encourage people to openly talk about prostate cancer and prostate checks. It's meant to encourage blokes to have a finger up their arse at 35, in order to have their prostate checked.
Now, are we going to see Movember that is no longer about 'men' and the stigmatism surrounding having their bum tickled, and instead have it replaced with 'People with prostates'?
No tranny, bi sexual, furry or any other degenerate wierdo on the LGBTQ spectrum will have an issue with have anything shoved up their arse.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
School Shooting threat on Long Island... specifically Valley Stream
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2020
Texas Can Seek Files From Twitter, Facebook in Suit Over New Law - Texas Can Demand the Receipts
Article | Archive
A federal judge will allow Texas to seek internal documents from social-media companies regarding how they moderate content, as the state defends a new law restricting when platforms can suspend users.
The ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman in Austin means Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is free to seek limited discovery from members of two prominent trade groups that sued to block the controversial statute, including Twitter Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, and Facebook Inc.
The ruling allows Paxton to seek documents and depose employees at members of NetChoice and Computer & Communications Industry Association -- but only if they’ll be impacted by the law barring platforms from suspending users over their political views. The statute, which applies to social-media companies with more than 50 million monthly users, takes effect Dec. 2.
The trade groups argue the statute will force social-medial platforms to host extremist content in violation of their user policies, and that Paxton’s discovery request was designed to “further antagonize” the targets of the law.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and other Republicans criticized social-media companies for banning former President Donald Trump from their platforms after a mob of his supporters raided the Capitol on Jan. 6. A similar law in Florida targeting social-media companies after the bans was put on hold by a judge in a suit brought by the same trade groups.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
First Amendment > some shithole social media company's retarded woke "user policies."
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
Kids be getting high and shit on halloween in NY
Article: https://longisland.news12.com/parents-warned-deceptively-packaged-products-could-contain-cannabis
Archive: https://archive.md/HfnlI
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Just days before Halloween, parents are being warned to keep their eyes out for another form of deceptive packaging that poses a risk to children.
Products deceptively packaged to look just like standard snack foods and candy actually contain high levels of cannabis and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), warns New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The products, which are illegal and unregulated in New York state, can be extremely dangerous to human health, the Office of the Attorney General warns, urging parents statewide to remain alert against the online sale of the misleading products.
"In light of an increase in accidental overdoses among children nationwide, it is more vital than ever that we do everything we can to curb this crisis and prevent any further harm, or even worse, death," James says.
Containing high concentrations of THC, the psychoactive compound found in cannabis, the products pose a high risk to children that, if consumed, can lead to accidental overdose, the office warns.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the most common overdose incidents among children involve ingestion of edible cannabis foods, and these incidents are on the rise.
In 2020, more than 70 percent of calls related to marijuana edibles to the Poison Control Center involved children under the age of 5, according to the Office of the Attorney General. In the first half of 2021, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has reported that poison control hotlines have received an estimated 2,622 calls for services related to young children ingesting illegal cannabis products.
Although New York state legalized adult-use cannabis earlier this year, products such as these that are for non-medical use are not yet being sold in the state legally.
In other states where non-medical cannabis products are permitted for sale, a single adult serving size of an edible cannabis product contains 5 milligrams of THC, but a standard bag of lookalike Cheetos brand product contains 600 milligrams of THC, her office warns. A child consuming these products would be consuming 120 times the maximum legal adult serving in those states.
Systems of THC overdose include respiratory distress, loss of coordination, lethargy, and loss of consciousness. New Yorkers who suspect that their child has become sick from consuming food containing high amounts of THC are encouraged to call the New York Regional Poison Control Centers at 1-800-222-1222.
New Yorkers who are aware of or have encountered these type of products are encouraged to contact the OAG by submitting a complaint form online or by calling (800) 771-7755.
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Article: https://longisland.news12.com/parents-warned-deceptively-packaged-products-could-contain-cannabis
Archive: https://archive.md/HfnlI
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Just days before Halloween, parents are being warned to keep their eyes out for another form of deceptive packaging that poses a risk to children.
Products deceptively packaged to look just like standard snack foods and candy actually contain high levels of cannabis and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), warns New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The products, which are illegal and unregulated in New York state, can be extremely dangerous to human health, the Office of the Attorney General warns, urging parents statewide to remain alert against the online sale of the misleading products.
"In light of an increase in accidental overdoses among children nationwide, it is more vital than ever that we do everything we can to curb this crisis and prevent any further harm, or even worse, death," James says.
Containing high concentrations of THC, the psychoactive compound found in cannabis, the products pose a high risk to children that, if consumed, can lead to accidental overdose, the office warns.
According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the most common overdose incidents among children involve ingestion of edible cannabis foods, and these incidents are on the rise.
In 2020, more than 70 percent of calls related to marijuana edibles to the Poison Control Center involved children under the age of 5, according to the Office of the Attorney General. In the first half of 2021, the American Association of Poison Control Centers has reported that poison control hotlines have received an estimated 2,622 calls for services related to young children ingesting illegal cannabis products.
Although New York state legalized adult-use cannabis earlier this year, products such as these that are for non-medical use are not yet being sold in the state legally.
In other states where non-medical cannabis products are permitted for sale, a single adult serving size of an edible cannabis product contains 5 milligrams of THC, but a standard bag of lookalike Cheetos brand product contains 600 milligrams of THC, her office warns. A child consuming these products would be consuming 120 times the maximum legal adult serving in those states.
Systems of THC overdose include respiratory distress, loss of coordination, lethargy, and loss of consciousness. New Yorkers who suspect that their child has become sick from consuming food containing high amounts of THC are encouraged to call the New York Regional Poison Control Centers at 1-800-222-1222.
New Yorkers who are aware of or have encountered these type of products are encouraged to contact the OAG by submitting a complaint form online or by calling (800) 771-7755.
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- Joined
- Jul 2, 2021
Sand nigger pushes to defund Minneapolis PD, proceeds to blame them when crime in the city spirals out of control.
fucking cunt whore bitch
fucking cunt whore bitch
The Valeyard
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2017
Former police officer jailed for arresting woman who ‘didn't make eye contact and smile’ at him (Archive )
A former NSW police officer has been jailed for assaulting a woman and lying about details in her arrest.
Anya Bradford was violently arrested in 2019 by Senior Constable Mark Follington at a pub in Liverpool, in Sydney’s west.
Follington previously told the court he was suspicious of her because she didn’t make eye contact with him and smile.
“People normally come up and say hello, she was keeping her eyes down,” he said.
“To me, that starts to send a signal to me that this person is trying to hide from me.”
When Follington attempted to stop her from leaving after asking her for ID, the court heard, Bradford told him to “f*** off”.
At that point, CCTV footage shows Follington grabbing her arm before a brawl broke out and he slammed her head into an ATM.
Bradford was not the subject of an arrest warrant.
On Wednesday, Follington was sentenced to a minimum jail term of 18 months.
Anya Bradford was violently arrested in 2019 by Senior Constable Mark Follington at a pub in Liverpool, in Sydney’s west.
Follington previously told the court he was suspicious of her because she didn’t make eye contact with him and smile.
“People normally come up and say hello, she was keeping her eyes down,” he said.
“To me, that starts to send a signal to me that this person is trying to hide from me.”
When Follington attempted to stop her from leaving after asking her for ID, the court heard, Bradford told him to “f*** off”.
At that point, CCTV footage shows Follington grabbing her arm before a brawl broke out and he slammed her head into an ATM.
Bradford was not the subject of an arrest warrant.
On Wednesday, Follington was sentenced to a minimum jail term of 18 months.
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
Retailers closing their stores on thanksgiving due to the coof. (Archive: https://archive.md/IyM6V )
List of Stores Closing:
List of Stores Closing:
- Bed Bath & Beyond
- Best Buy
- BJ's Wholesale Club
- Boscov's
- Costco
- Dick's Sporting Goods
- Foot Locker
- Kohl's
- Nordstrom
- REI (closed Black Friday too)
- Sam’s Club
- Simon Properties
- Target
- Walmart
Amber the Hedgehog
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 23, 2018
I think there should be a law to say that THC edibles can't look like other snacks, especially not those target to kids. I love parodies and joke packaging but you can't expect little kids to pick on that. Some of these are so subtle that parents might easily mistake it for regular stuff and kids sneak treats to avoid being told no anyway. There is no excuse making packaging that invates accidental usage and I don't think it's too much to ask from companies to avoid poisoning kids.
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2013
Man spent $150 eating every meal at Six Flags since 2014 to pay off student debt
Talk about a meal ticket. Hungry for financial flexibility, a California man named Dylan shelled out a measly $150 a year to eat every meal at Six Flags Magic Mountain in order to save thousa…
nypost.com
WonderWino
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
So, I got bored and looked up pogs to see if anything ever actually came of them since the 90s.....imagine my surprise to find the world pog federation still technically exists, has a twitter and is full on kill the cops antifa:
Cause having your business publicly calling out for people to burn down police stations and stab cops is totally a good idea
Cause having your business publicly calling out for people to burn down police stations and stab cops is totally a good idea
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2020
That’s definitely some tankie millennial from California and not actually POG
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2018
'I'm proud to be a real-life witch'
The Tumblr witches are spreading.
Tonks Brown lives on her own in a remote croft in the Scottish Highlands and says she is proud to be a real-life witch.
For her, Halloween is not about costumes, pumpkins and trick or treating.
"I think society has a pop culture idea of witches," says 36-year-old Tonks.
"It is about so much more, it's a big part of my life, it's my religion and faith," she says.
The 31 October is New Year for Pagans and Tonks says it is all about starting afresh and not taking baggage into the harsh winter months.
She turned to Paganism when she was 12 and living on the Isle of Mull.
"I was bullied at high school for being different," she says.
"I had the Wee Free Church thrust down my throat at school, having services in a church and praying all the time," she says.
"I can remember being told off for colouring-in when I should have been praying."
Tonks says it was in the outdoors that she got the sense she was not on her own and "that animals were enlightened beings".
"I would save a snail from a path so it wouldn't be trodden on," she says.
"It was this that made me realise nature was my church rather than a big, cold, old building."
Tonks says she found that Paganism "just felt right and made sense to me".
"Everything in nature has an essence, everything has its own purpose and it's nice to be more aware of that and to fit in with that."
She also began reading about the witch trials of the past.
"Unfortunately, lots of witches tend to be women, women who had knowledge, midwives and herbalists," she says.
"So they they thought in the past we must kill her because we can't have a woman with knowledge."
Tonks, who works for the emergency services, drives 10 minutes each day to a remote outpost to work in an office.
She says she has learned not to preach about Paganism but will stand up for witches in her day-to-day life.
"If I hear someone making a joke about a witch I will chip in and say I'm a witch," she says.
"I will challenge any form of prejudice but it's never confrontational."
Tonks, who previously worked as a tour guide for the City of The Dead Tours in Edinburgh, says she has worked in councils, the police and the ambulance service but her Paganism is not usually an issue.
"I did have a colleague who was terrified of a prop I had taken to work that looked like a wand because I was going to a rehearsal straight after work," she says.
"She wouldn't touch it due to the stigma surrounding witches. I tend to just find it amusing rather than being hurt by it."
Tonks says Halloween, for her, is about practising her Pagan spells and witchcraft.
She has been growing herbs such as sage, rosemary and thyme all year in preparation for the festival which is known as Samhain in Gaelic - marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or "darker-half" of the year.
Tonks has been drying the herbs on her fire so they burn better when she is using them in her spells.
She will burn the sage to "smudge" - cleanse - herself and her house with the smoke and has salt and iron for protection from ghosts, fairies and other supernatural entities.
She has also been anointing candles with different oils and herbs as well as carving symbols into them to use in spells on the big day.
Spells in a teacup
For the more obscure herbs she has to make a trip to the herbalist.
"Eye of newt or toe of frog are medicinal names for plants but often people think witches are using these body parts, which is not the case, it's just plants," she says.
She makes the spells in a teacup before pouring them into a charcoal pot, which she will light when she is performing her spells on Halloween.
She will perform them at an altar in her bedroom with plants representing earth, incense for air and candles for fire and water.
White witches, like Tonks, who do not cast spells with malicious intent, use two ritual knives.
They use a Boline, which is a white-handled knife for collecting herbs and carving candles and an Athene knife, which is used to make a shape or cut a cord in a spell.
Tonks says she is always on her own when she does her spells.
"I know lots of other witches, we are everywhere, in the police, in local shops, but it is too personal for me to practise magic with them, you have to have a huge amount of trust," she says.
White witches refer to a witches' journal called the Book of Shadows for spell recipes.
She says: "I adapt spells from the book as is the hedge witch style."
Tonks says she will be wearing robes or no clothes at all when she carries out her spells on Halloween.
And she will have a carved turnip "with a scary face" at the door of her bothy to ward off ghosts "so they won't bother" her home.
She says: "I'm out of the broom closet these days and tell people I'm a practising witch and 99% of them react the same as if I had said I was Christian or Muslim.
"I'm proud to be a real-life witch and Halloween is the best holiday."
For her, Halloween is not about costumes, pumpkins and trick or treating.
"I think society has a pop culture idea of witches," says 36-year-old Tonks.
"It is about so much more, it's a big part of my life, it's my religion and faith," she says.
The 31 October is New Year for Pagans and Tonks says it is all about starting afresh and not taking baggage into the harsh winter months.
She turned to Paganism when she was 12 and living on the Isle of Mull.
"I was bullied at high school for being different," she says.
"I had the Wee Free Church thrust down my throat at school, having services in a church and praying all the time," she says.
"I can remember being told off for colouring-in when I should have been praying."
Tonks says it was in the outdoors that she got the sense she was not on her own and "that animals were enlightened beings".
"I would save a snail from a path so it wouldn't be trodden on," she says.
"It was this that made me realise nature was my church rather than a big, cold, old building."
Tonks says she found that Paganism "just felt right and made sense to me".
"Everything in nature has an essence, everything has its own purpose and it's nice to be more aware of that and to fit in with that."
She also began reading about the witch trials of the past.
"Unfortunately, lots of witches tend to be women, women who had knowledge, midwives and herbalists," she says.
"So they they thought in the past we must kill her because we can't have a woman with knowledge."
Tonks, who works for the emergency services, drives 10 minutes each day to a remote outpost to work in an office.
She says she has learned not to preach about Paganism but will stand up for witches in her day-to-day life.
"If I hear someone making a joke about a witch I will chip in and say I'm a witch," she says.
"I will challenge any form of prejudice but it's never confrontational."
Tonks, who previously worked as a tour guide for the City of The Dead Tours in Edinburgh, says she has worked in councils, the police and the ambulance service but her Paganism is not usually an issue.
"I did have a colleague who was terrified of a prop I had taken to work that looked like a wand because I was going to a rehearsal straight after work," she says.
"She wouldn't touch it due to the stigma surrounding witches. I tend to just find it amusing rather than being hurt by it."
Tonks says Halloween, for her, is about practising her Pagan spells and witchcraft.
She has been growing herbs such as sage, rosemary and thyme all year in preparation for the festival which is known as Samhain in Gaelic - marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or "darker-half" of the year.
Tonks has been drying the herbs on her fire so they burn better when she is using them in her spells.
She will burn the sage to "smudge" - cleanse - herself and her house with the smoke and has salt and iron for protection from ghosts, fairies and other supernatural entities.
She has also been anointing candles with different oils and herbs as well as carving symbols into them to use in spells on the big day.
Spells in a teacup
For the more obscure herbs she has to make a trip to the herbalist.
"Eye of newt or toe of frog are medicinal names for plants but often people think witches are using these body parts, which is not the case, it's just plants," she says.
She makes the spells in a teacup before pouring them into a charcoal pot, which she will light when she is performing her spells on Halloween.
She will perform them at an altar in her bedroom with plants representing earth, incense for air and candles for fire and water.
White witches, like Tonks, who do not cast spells with malicious intent, use two ritual knives.
They use a Boline, which is a white-handled knife for collecting herbs and carving candles and an Athene knife, which is used to make a shape or cut a cord in a spell.
Tonks says she is always on her own when she does her spells.
"I know lots of other witches, we are everywhere, in the police, in local shops, but it is too personal for me to practise magic with them, you have to have a huge amount of trust," she says.
White witches refer to a witches' journal called the Book of Shadows for spell recipes.
She says: "I adapt spells from the book as is the hedge witch style."
Tonks says she will be wearing robes or no clothes at all when she carries out her spells on Halloween.
And she will have a carved turnip "with a scary face" at the door of her bothy to ward off ghosts "so they won't bother" her home.
She says: "I'm out of the broom closet these days and tell people I'm a practising witch and 99% of them react the same as if I had said I was Christian or Muslim.
"I'm proud to be a real-life witch and Halloween is the best holiday."
The Tumblr witches are spreading.
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2021
A letter from Nathan DeGrave alleging abuse while detained for Jan 6th Activities:
(Twitter link)(link) (archive)
(Twitter link)(link) (archive)
Wallace
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 23, 2015
The Algorithm
The media's new business model is propaganda.
A few weeks ago, in Los Angeles, a brawl broke out on the street in front of a spa in Koreatown. A video had gone viral in late June of a woman berating a staff member of Wi Spa for allegedly allowing a trans woman to use the women’s locker room. The trans woman, the angry customer claimed, had strutted around with her exposed penis in full view of children. A giddy Tucker Carlson showed the video to his national audience, applauding the irate customer for her bravery while voicing not a word of skepticism about her claims, for which there is no evidence and some reason to believe was entirely made up. Soon after, an “anti-pervert protest” took place. Black-clad counterprotesters mobilized to confront the “transphobes.” Physical violence ensued.
This much we know for certain. For other details, we’re forced to rely on the reports of national media outlets. Not so long ago, that would have been a straightforward and relatively non-problematic proposition. But as the field of journalism has been forced to undergo drastic changes in response to the broken revenue model of the news business, that’s no longer the case. Increasingly, relying on mainstream media accounts is like relying on official updates from the U.S. military regarding developments in a war, or press releases from a corporate PR firm describing a company’s recent stellar performance. Some of the facts you’re presented with are probably accurate — maybe even all of them — but you have to start with the assumption that the whole thing is by and large propaganda.For example, here is a New Republic article recounting the details of the melee in Los Angeles. The author of the article lives in New York, and doesn’t appear to have been present at the protest (I emailed her to ask but received no reply). The reporting is cobbled together from videos on YouTube. The protesters, the reporter declares definitively, were “Proud Boys” and “QAnon adherents.” The evidence for both is hearsay.
The Proud Boys claim is from an activist who was shooting video from his phone. The evidence for the QAnon claim appears to be from a story by a Guardian reporter who, unlike her TNR counterpart, was actually present, but who didn’t in fact claim that the protesters were “QAnon adherents,” just that they chanted a slogan that is popular with QAnon types. (A Los Angeles Magazine freelancer who was present claimed, for whatever it’s worth, that he recognized “a number of protesters from past QAnon rallies, though I know not all of them subscribe to the conspiracy.”) The New Republic account goes on to describe how these right-wing ruffians “harassed journalists” and attacked defenseless bystanders, some of which is backed up by video. Then the police showed up and “targeted trans rights supporters and anti-fascist activists … beating at least one of them with batons, firing rubber bullets, and arresting 40 people.” The article warns ominously of the “right-wing outrage machine” that is ramping up “attacks on trans people.”
There’s nothing extraordinary about the New Republic piece. I’m not dissecting it because it’s special, but because it’s typical. Any number of articles followed the exact same script, whether they were published in Vice or The Daily Beast or Jezebel. The debatable presence of the Proud Boys and QAnon is a staple in these reports, as is the absence of any interviews with anyone present, the omission of any reference to violence from the counterprotesters, and the exclusive reliance on YouTube videos and the one article by a reporter who was actually there to piece together the reportage.
These aren’t so much reports, in other words, as write-ups. There isn’t even an attempt at original fact-finding. The sourcing is almost entirely derived from the posts and videos of left-wing activists, which are taken at face value. The unquestioned assumption is that everyone who showed up to protest the spa were bigoted, monstrous people, and there’s no curiosity about what else might constitute their points of view. The takeaway — that a menacing cabal of right-wing extremists is putting the rights and safety of trans people at risk — is precisely on-message with the activists whose side the reporters are blindly taking.
By all appearances, the reporters watched some videos, discerned the narrative being presented to them, and wrote a book report on it. This is journalism in the same way that television recaps are journalism.
The New Republic was once one of the most prestigious magazines in America. But more than almost any other national outlet, it has been pummeled by the collapse of the old advertising-based business model of mass media. It has suffered through failed buyout after failed buyout, including one by a well-intentioned tech billionaire that led to a staff revolt and mass resignations. For a long while, TNR’s writers and editors clung jealously to the lofty ideals of the journalism profession of the twentieth century, resisting the industry’s rapid descent into click farming as a result of the diversion of its ad revenues to Facebook and Google. But that version of the profession doesn’t exist anymore. Inevitably, the new economic forces shaping the industry caught up even to the vaunted New Republic, and it was assimilated into the vast digital monoculture that is the journalism of today. Now, the outlet formerly known as “the in-flight magazine of Air Force One” has to wrestle in the muck with all the other left-of-center political tabloids, defending its dwindling share of the market by competing for the attention of liberal readers with sensational stories that stoke their anxieties, flatter their moral egos, and confirm their biases. This is what journalism has become.
In Postjournalism and the Death of Newspapers, Andrey Miroshnichenko describes the drift of digital media toward what he calls “native propaganda.” The term is derived from “native advertising,” which, under a prior media business model, was an innovative new experiment in revenue generation.
Native advertising emerged at the tail end of the collapse of the advertising-based business model. That was back when people still browsed websites instead of finding every article through social media, and news outlets were still attempting to sustain themselves by selling website real estate to advertisers, and searching for a competitive advantage that the news business could leverage over its non-journalistic rivals in selling ads on the internet. Someone came up with the idea of “native advertising,” in which ads would be written by real journalists and presented in the style of a news article, to confuse readers into believing that they weren’t being advertised to, but were instead reading a recommendation by a disinterested reporter writing for a trusted news outlet. The content was still advertising, but it was “native” to the format, style and sensibility of the outlet it was published on.
Today, the advertising model has been largely replaced by what Miroshnichenko calls the “subscription solicited as donation” model. Under this model, readers are turned into paying subscribers, but the transaction is more than a merely commercial one. It’s more like a combination of a traditional subscription, in which you’re paying for news content that you wouldn’t be able to access otherwise, and a membership solicitation of the sort that your local NPR station makes several times a year. Readers are called upon to support the outlet not just to get past a paywall, but also for value-based, altruistic reasons: to support “independent journalism,” to uphold democracy, or, increasingly, to help give voice to the oppressed by funding reporters who will use their journalism as a tool for advocacy and activism.
News outlets, in other words, are selling themselves to partisan audiences as the producers and propagators of the political narratives those audiences favor. For a right-wing outlet, these favored narratives may be the spread of cancel culture, or the forgotten middle Americans who are standing up to the coastal elites, or the menace of Antifa. For left-wing outlets, they may be the rising threat of QAnon, or the infiltration of police forces by white supremacists, or the anti-vaxxers who are killing innocent Americans. In both cases, what is being sold is not news, or even editorial opinion. Indeed, the product that readers are buying isn’t even necessarily for their own personal consumption. What’s being sold is not a good, but a service: the service of pushing a particular political narrative onto a mass audience of Americans. It’s “native propaganda”: propaganda disguised as journalism.
One need only look at the membership pitches of outlets on both the left and the right to see it. Typically these pitches cite the outlets’ abilities to get their stories out to a wide swathe of readers — readers other than the prospective subscriber himself — as a benefit that they provide to that prospective subscriber. If the subscription were a simple commercial transaction, in which readers were merely paying to access news behind a paywall, this pitch would make no sense. It would be like a shoe company trying to pitch you on how many other consumers they’ll be able to sell shoes to if you support them with your purchase.
But the pitch is not merely about selling readers the news, the way a shoe company might sell you a pair of shoes. It’s a pitch aimed at ideologically motivated readers, selling the outlet’s ability to bring its ideologically loaded news product to other readers, whose political opinions might then be shaped by consuming that reporting. Subscribers, in other words, are being asked to support the outlet’s capacity to propagandize to others.
This puts the journalists who work for those outlets in a different position than they would have been in ten or twenty years ago. If the Wi Spa fracas had taken place in the year 2000, a writer for The New Republic might have been expected to go to L.A., interview participants on either side of the protests, learn new facts and, if possible, come up with an interesting, novel explanation of what transpired. The product of this work would then be sold to subscribers as news, while the subscribers’ attention was sold, in turn, to advertisers. This was the revenue model that paid The New Republic’s bills back then, and everybody else’s.
A journalist for The New Republic in 2021 has it easier. The New Republic’s subscribers aren’t paying for the investigative prowess and sharp insights that only a reporter for The New Republic can bring to a story like the Wi Spa protests; indeed, they can find a virtually identical version of the same article, with all of the same details, on any number of other platforms, including for free on Twitter. What TNR’s subscribers are paying for is the same thing that Vice’s subscribers and The Intercept’s subscribers and The Daily Wire’s subscribers are paying for, which is the outlet’s reliable political spin on events and its ability to get that spin out to the broader public. A TNR journalist in 2021, then, is expected only to selectively aggregate the relevant facts and links to videos, shape them into the preconceived political narrative favored by her readers, and write it all out longhand — all of which she can do without ever stepping away from her laptop or picking up a phone. Someday soon, she’ll probably be replaced by a bot.
This arrangement works particularly well, of course, for activists, in precisely the way that, 13 years ago, Fox News’ exploitation of the Tea Party story worked out beautifully for the Tea Party. Like Fox’s anchors and pundits, journalists of this type effectively serve the same purpose for the activists they cover that PR firms serve for corporate clients, though the economics break down a little differently. Activists don’t hire journalists, obviously, the way corporations hire PR consultants. But the outlets those journalists work for nevertheless generate income from the favorable coverage they bestow on those activists. The activists these outlets cover tend to share the same political values and beliefs as the outlet’s audience. By disseminating the activists’ message, the outlets serve their readers’ political ends. Having done so, they then ask their readers for financial support in the form of subscriptions. This is the business model. Within this loop, everybody’s interests are served by this happy, synergistic relationship: the activists get their message pushed out to a national audience; the outlets provide value to their ideologically-motivated readers who they can then convert into paying subscribers; and the readers are comforted by the knowledge that their favorite media outlets are defending their values by speaking truth to power — specifically, their truth to the power of their political enemies.
There’s a lot of room for getting the facts wrong with this biased-by-design approach, of course. One has only to look at Fox’s coverage of any number of issues throughout its history to see how the media can create its own detached, curated reality when it slavishly panders to its audience’s ideological priors. But that isn’t even the main issue here; there’s a fair chance that TNR, Vice, The Daily Beast and Jezebel got most if not all of the details right on the Wi Spa story, even if they were selectively reported. The issue is that the activity in question isn’t even reporting.
No actual journalism transpired in the crafting of The New Republic’s article on the Wi Spa ruckus, unless you’re willing to count the simple collation of facts reported elsewhere and the curation of links to videos as “journalism.” If anyone conducted any actual journalism in the creation of TNR’s story, it was the people on the ground shooting the video that the story depended upon. But most of those people weren’t journalists; they were activists. Which brings us to the most important characteristic of what Miroshnichenko calls “postjournalism”: increasingly, media outlets are no longer in the business of finding the news, because all of the information that would constitute “the news” is already online for everyone to see, posted and uploaded by activists and other interested parties. The media no longer reports the news, in Miroshnichenko’s analysis — it validates it. It adds its establishment imprimatur to information that’s already in your news feed, so that you can point to it as an authoritative source in your online discussions and arguments with others. The reporter may have done literally nothing more than you could, and probably would, if you had watched the videos posted to Twitter and found yourself sufficiently angered by them to write a long Facebook screed. But your Facebook screed doesn’t have a New Republic logo on it.
The consequences of this business model in the real world can be summed up in a word: polarization. There’s a perfect alignment of interests between the media, its consumers, and professional political agitators in stoking fear, animosity, and mutual recrimination among the public. The media industry cultivates its only remaining revenue stream. News consumers see their ideological prejudices affirmed by brand name media outlets, and comfort themselves in the belief that the media is doing its job to ensure that their worldview prevails in the public debate. Activists get free PR. Everyone benefits as we all nurture our contempt for one another over the course of a news cycle. Then, once that news cycle is exhausted, media outlets, with the help of activists, make sure that a new outrage flares up to begin the cycle all over again. The survival of an entire industry depends on it.
In the case of the Wi Spa story, it didn’t take much time at all. Within a couple of weeks, there was another violent skirmish, this time in front of the Cedars-Sinai breast cancer clinic, also in L.A.. This flare-up was over a different hot button issue, but it followed the same script.
Like every health care facility I’ve been in post-vaccination, the Cedars-Sinai clinic still had a mask mandate in place. Maybe a dozen people showed up to protest this tyrannical infringement on their liberties, aware, I think it’s safe to assume, that the action was crack cocaine to the native propagandist-journalists of the left-of-center media world. To make it even more enticing, some of the protestors wore black t-shirts that read, “COVID IS A SCAM.” Predictably, counterprotesters showed up, including members of Antifa. In short order, fist fights erupted. Lots of smart phones were on hand to document the squabbles. The tabloids pounced, as readily as if they were following stage directions. It was kayfabe, all the way down.
On an episode of my favorite podcast, Red Scare, co-host Dasha Nekrasova, describing the Wi Spa protests, passingly referred to the whole affair as “the algorithm.” It’s an apt metaphor. Just as YouTube’s digital algorithm serves us up ever more extreme content to keep us glued to our screens, the human algorithm that governs the media’s new business model scours our newsfeeds for catalysts for outrage and amplifies them. Political provocateurs, from anti-maskers to Antifa LARPers, understand the algorithm and exploit it, performing their assigned roles in the streets, in front of their iPhone cameras. The rest of us consume it with glee, every bite reminding us that we stand on the right side of history, unlike the rest of those morons with whom we’re forced to share a country. It’s a perfectly functional dysfunctional system. Everybody wins while everybody loses.
Super-Chevy454
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2018
The guy who wrote this article from American Thinker think then something big is coming. Let's wait and see if it'll be a nothing burger or not but with the city elections in the Big Apple and the upcoming Virginia state election, who knows if it might be only the tip of the iceberg?
www.americanthinker.com
Something Big is Coming
Dilbert creator Scott Adams tweeted this week: ”The country’s energy is strange. Everything is amped up in every direction. Something big is coming.” He’s rarely wrong about such things. Adams said he doesn’t know wha...
- Joined
- Mar 29, 2014
京王線刺傷、逮捕の男「ジョーカーに憧れていた」 - YouTube
(google translate: Keio Line stabbed, arrested man "I was longing for Joker")
(google translate: Keio Line stabbed, arrested man "I was longing for Joker")
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2021
Dog show in Florida turns violent-but once you see who's fighting, you won't be surprised. If you know the breed of the dog, you know the breed of the owner.
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2020
If this shit its true then congrats glowies you just created an entire generation of angry violent insurrectionists looking for payback.
Seems you fuckers didnt learn shit from Iraq.