Why the News In Not the Truth

What are the stories people still believe about the Covington kid? Or Jesse Smollett?

Two things pretty high on my list of things I don't care about.

That the kid provoked the native and mocked and insulted him in racists ways (utterly false).

That Smollett was the victim of a racial based attack

The far right fundamentally does not understand the first amendment.

I don't think there is a first amendment right to lie to the police about a purported crime you have been a victim of (which you organized yourself) in order to gain publicity.

Which is why Smollett got convicted for that.

There is a first amendment right for CNN to lie and distort news of the incident, but no one here is claiming they committed a crime broadcasting fake news: topic is, CNN broadcasted fake news about that event

Lol at Smollett. The guys wikepedia page

It's in the intro....by far the thing he's most known for.

Some guys here are into rocket science.

That is certainly one interpretation or opinion about the event.

you've been big mad about that maddow directly quoting a rolling stone article which directly quoted an oklahoma doctor thing for quite awhile.

It was a lie

This type of thinking fascinates me. It's obviously totally and objectionably wrong. It's not your fault if the media lies or even insinuates untruths which are absorbed as facts into the discourse. We are all responsible for the predictable consequences of our own actions. The media knows when it is lying and it should be held responsible for lying. The fascinating thing about the quote above is that the media's behavior, of which lying is a core element, would not be accepted were it not for these types of thoughts in people. But where do these thoughts come from? so irrational, so obsequious to power? Are these thoughts also provided from the media itself? Say a lie was a virus trying to influence your thoughts. It's trying to invade you conscience and make more lies (a strained analogy but bear with me). Thoughts like the quote are like a built-in counter strategy to your inborn common sense, like how viruses evolve counter measures to your immune system. Imagine a virus that also causes the inability to understand it's origins. This is why when I see a post like tame_deuces post above I can't be angry at them for being so stupid but I have to look at them like a victim, like someone with rabies who is trying to infect other people but not as a conscious choice.

The reason why the news isn't the truth is that our government is a state-corporate complex that works to build consensus for corporate objectives which tend to run in opposition to the objectives of the majority of citizens. It builds this consensus or consent through both the government elements and the corporate elements, of which the media is one corporate element. You can see when looking into literally any element of the corporate media, but one educational example is the firing of Phil Donahue from MSNBC. Most people have this model in their head that the news is trying to be truthful and objective because that will make them money by growing their audience, who appreciates truth and objectivity, and selling that audience to advertisers. Money could be made that way. But there is so much more money to be made by way of war and that's why MSNBC, who bills itself as the liberal or Left leaning outlet, fired Donahue. They fired him despite his show being highly rated because he brought on too many antiwar commentators and the parent company was afraid that could influence public opinion and threaten war profits. This is the only explanation that makes sense given the high ratings of his show when Donahue was fired. This is despite Donahue complying with the networks biased rules which never allowed an antiwar voice to be featured without an accompanying pro war voice (no parallel requirement for pro war voices) and limited the total number of antiwar voices.

mass distributed information was false and created to install narratives helpful for people at the top of the social hierarchy even before corporations existed as a concept.

I mean that's what all organized religions were about in essence.

and news were false in the USSR as well, and are false in north Korea right now, and will be false in all societies in human history unless we go through some significant DNA modification.

but without complete centralization of power you get different false narratives and a bunch of unadulterated truth, which is why our systems are better than the centralized ones in NK or when claiming the church was wrong meant the death penalty.

I disagree. There is a grain of truth in what you are saying, of course, but there was a time in this country when news organizations were competing with one another on a journalistic basis, in an attempt to serve the public better instead of crafting narratives serving the elite.

There are a lot of archived news broadcasts from the 60s and 70s I find pretty interesting to watch. Ownership of news outlets was far less concentrated and far less dominated by trans national corporations. And you can see that a lot of the journalism reflected the interests of the majority. There were a lot of muck raking journalists. There were whole segments which attempted to dive into the minutia behind policies and exposes highlighting what marginalized groups were experiencing. I couldn't believe the length of the commercials, all packed in within 2-3 minutes tops. They would show like 4 30 second spots and right back to news. Corrections were highlighted.

Let me put it another way. It's true that media outlets have always maintained the business interests of their owners. However, over time capital tends to grow and concentrate in fewer hands so those interests which media outlets have to maintain have changed. Those interests have become more sensitive to national politics. Maybe the owner of some Dallas news paper once upon a time also had an interest in landing a new sports franchise in the city and the newspaper put out favorable editorials to these ends but, on other matters, allowed more autonomy to journalists. Now, however, the owner of a huge company, Amazon, also owns the Washington Post. Bezos has a national workforce and distribution centers all over the world. His policy preferences are much broader and might include the desire to influence the very political philosophies of the readership.

Do you see the trend? More concentrated ownership in the media by more powerful interests leads to tighter reigns, I would call it thought control, in order to manufacture consent for more ambitious projects which cut more severely against the interests of the majority.

I mean if you take a period of time when all major media companies went with the completly made up second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin which was the casus belli that caused 60k americans to die for nothing + countless more become incapacitated as an example of some splendid pluralist media era when journalists were not carrying water for power...

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ😉 was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It consisted of a confrontation on August 2, 1964, when United States forces were carrying out covert amphibious operations close to North Vietnamese territorial waters, which triggered a response from North Vietnamese forces. The United States government falsely claimed that a second incident occurred on August 4, 1964, between North Vietnamese and United States ships in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Originally, US military claims blamed North Vietnam for the confrontation and the ostensible, but in fact imaginary, incident on August 4. Later investigation revealed that the second attack never happened. The National Security Agency, an agency of the US Defense Department, had deliberately skewed intelligence to create the impression that an attack had been carried out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

en

Gulf of Tonkin incident - Wikipedia

You could say the media failed there. I don't know what the current thinking is on what opportunity the media had to break that story as a false flag. It seems like it wasn't even confirmed until McNamara started spouting off in his old age so it might have just been too well orchestrated by defense to attack.

However the contrast between how the Vietnam war itself was covered and how the Iraq war was covered is often cited as the textbook example of how concentrated corporate ownership of the media has changed journalism. Imbedded journalists, government approval of images and banning of showing coffins, totally fake and easily debunkable stories going unquestioned by the corporate media are some examples of innovations designed to manufacture consent. And then on mainstream news you this fetishism of the weapons of war featuring cool looking 3D renderings of fighter jets with journalists being like oh "that's so rad!". I wasn't around, but from what I've seen that would have never have happened in the 70s.

And then there is the contrast of a few big lies getting us into Vietnam compared to the constellation of lies leading us into Iraq. I mean, from top to bottom it was just one apparently false lie after another and the media went along with every one of them. An string of lies regarding WMDs and Iraq connections to the alleged 911 terrorists were obviously effective as seen in the polls regarding public support for the war. When Nixon lied they drummed him out of office. That's the president. Biden had to drop out of his presidential bid in 1988. Now when you lie it's like you get promoted. No way does someone like Maureen Dowd still have a career if she told all those lies in the 70s. All the people who blatantly lied us into war like Cheney and Wolfowitz are still consulted on major news networks for their supposed insight. The difference is concentrated corporate ownership by transnational corporations.

so these superpowerful consensus manufacturing big media that didn't cover the vietnam war the same achieve this

While in the "totally differently covered" vietnam war, this happened with public opinion

And the vietnam war had conscription which by itself should have justified complete opposition to the intervention by rational people.

"few big lies" getting into Vietnam like years of nonsense domino theory being presented as "expert opinion" by the media.

that lies aren't punished anymore isn't because of the media: people just don't care anymore as they know and fully expect anyone to lie so that can't be the bar for selecting anyone (much more rational this way imo but you can disagree).

The media is around telling us Biden, Harris, Trump, Walz, and so on lie 24/7.

As for the market concentration in media for national news, you are simply wrong. It was ultraconcentrated in very few hands even 50-60-70 years ago.

Yes local newspaper and tv stations were perhaps more numerous but that had no bearing on national elections, federal shenanigans and so on

The news media, which is owned and controlled by the same conglomerate that are puppet masters for the democratic party (and a lot of republicans as well) will lie and spin things to align with their own agendas, including but not limited to The Associated Press.

Do we know it was really him on stage? Ears look suspect.

No, saying that it’s a fact of life is what’s in contention. Which he did say. I don’t know why you think we can’t read.

Countries with gun control don’t tend to have mass shootings. Shocker, I know. So it absolutely isn’t a fact of life.