[washbrain]

Yes, all outlets are biased. It is literally impossible to have a neutral news source.

But there's a world of difference between, say, a random article on the BBC and Alex Jones saying the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors.

I think we can agree that there is a material difference there.

[LewisVerstappen]

> a random article on the BBC and Alex Jones saying the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors

A tiny fraction of people follow Alex Jones and the vast majority disagree (or have no idea who he is). I have yet to see someone who actually believes the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors.

The reality is that the US corporate media (literally billion dollar media companies like NY Times or WaPo) are angry about losing their monopoly on what the "truth" is.

Now, they have to compete with independent journalists publishing on Substack/YouTube (read how critical the NY Times is of Substack. It's absurd.). They're trying to get YouTube/Facebook/Twitter to censor anyone who's not "an expert", where they get to decide who counts as an expert.

So, the media is trying to push a narrative that Alex Jones is a bigger threat than he really is. They're also trying to paint all independent media as Alex Jones-type so they can maintain their monopoly on the truth.

Meanwhile, they continue to run million dollar marketing campaigns where they're trying convince everyone that they're the truth ("Democracy Dies in Darkness").

Frankly, the media did the exact same thing with Trump in 2016 (and continue to do so). Trump was a fringe character during the beginning of the RNC for the 2016 election and Jeb Bush was the frontrunner.

The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.

Then, when Trump ended up winning, the media pretended they had 0 culpability and spun up a false narrative that the Russian interference gave Trump the victory (The Russians interfered, but their interference wasn't what swung the election, it was a laughable attempt if you read their strategies. The media talking about Trump 24/7 was what gave him the victory).

[criddell]

> I have yet to see someone who actually believes the kids in Sandy Hook were crisis actors.

Listen to the testimony given by some of the Sandy Hook families during the Alex Jones trial. It's heartbreaking.

[LewisVerstappen]

Ok? Again, this is an extremely fringe view. There are a couple thousand people who believe the sandy hook children were actors. The rest of the US thinks those people are abhorrent.

Censoring independent media and giving the US corporate press a monopoly on truth as a response to this incident (or other fringe incidents like this) would be a massive mistake.

[criddell]

I don’t think the prosecution of Alex Jones is an example of independent media being censored. He harmed some people with lies and is being held accountable.

Nobody here is suggesting US corporate press has a monopoly on truth.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

Thank you for stating it so clearly. If the media was not building narratives and, in effect, household recognition of some profiles around none of this would be an issue. But we have narratives, because they do sell and old media has to compete with new entrants that are not as bogged down by quaint rules that governs old media ( and that includes stream of Alex Jones ).

I do not blame just the old media though. They just responded to the reality the best way they could. There is a reason most articles are now a litany of clickbaity titles. I blame us.

[zzzeek]

> The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7 and give him unlimited free air time (and they got a ratings bump in return). They took someone who was a fringe character and made him seem like the mainstream. The Streisand Effect kicked in and Trump immediately shot up in the polls.

your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims and this one is the crowning piece. please supply *any* actual documentation for any of these made up ideas. Trump shot up in popularity because he ran in primaries, he had plenty of money to do so as well as a lot of backers (both domestic and foreign, we were to learn) all around the country and conservative voters liked his ideas (mostly the anti-immigrant rhetoric, which is the oldest song in the conservative catalog, as well as a deep well of hatred for HRC that had been developed by conservative interests for literally decades) the best, plain and simple. FOX news would have built him up ahead of time as they are a right wing propaganda outlet that most certainly did want to create a Trump candidacy, sure. however "Left wing media" or even "mainstream" media outside of FOX did not "pre-choose" Trump ahead of his popularity by any means. As he continued beating everyone in polling and later in actual primaries by crazy numbers, the (non-FOX) media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate. There is absolutely nothing new about that in conservative politics (except for the novel opportunity to run against a female candidate who had been built up as a focal point of anger for 25 years).

The bigger problem with this notion that Trump was "fringe outside the mainstream" is this attempt to distance US conservatism from the deeply nativist, anti-immigrant stance of the Trump presidency. But that is exactly a core value of the conservative base, which I have personally observed for my whole life amongst the many conservatives in my large extended family as well as in the communities I live in. He is exactly what "regular" conservatives want. Trying to pin it on a "the media made us do it!" is a dangerous lie in that regard.

[LewisVerstappen]

> your post is chock full of simply ridiculous claims

State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.

> please supply any actual documentation for any of these made up ideas

Here's a study by the Shorenstein Center on Media/Politics/Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

"The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."

"Neither of these indicators, however, explains Trump’s coverage. When his news coverage began to shoot up, he was not high in the trial-heat polls and had raised almost no money. Upon entering the race, he stood much taller in the news than he stood in the polls.[8] By the end of the invisible primary, he was high enough in the polls to get the coverage expected of a frontrunner. But he was lifted to that height by an unprecedented amount of free media."

"The Democratic race in 2015 received less than half the coverage of the Republican race. Bernie Sanders’ campaign was largely ignored in the early months but, as it began to get coverage, it was overwhelmingly positive in tone."

"The Shorenstein Center study is based on an analysis of thousands of news statements by CBS, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The study’s data were provided by Media Tenor, a firm that specializes in the content analysis of news coverage."

https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016...

Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".

> As he continued beating everyone by crazy numbers, the media appropriately noticed and reported on it, and he became the center of attention as is actually appropriate

Completely false. You provide 0 evidence whatsoever. I gave you a study conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School that shows the exact opposite.

The media gave Trump disproportionate airtime at the start of the primary when he was polling far behind other republican candidates.

[zzzeek]

> State exactly which claims are ridiculous and why they're ridiculous.

the media did not give Trump free air time as a nobody, fringe candidate. Especially left leaning media. Trump ran for president many times before and he was always treated as the joke he is. What changed in 2016 was he had HRC to run against as well as a potent backlash in conservative politics that was brewing after the Obama presidency.

> "The report shows that during the year 2015, major news outlets covered Donald Trump in a way that was unusual given his low initial polling numbers—a high volume of media coverage preceded Trump’s rise in the polls."

your statement is: "The media (left especially) proceeded to talk about Trump 24/7". The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news. I'm a consumer of left leaning media. In that world, Trump was a total nobody until he began winning.

> Of course, you provide 0 "documentation" for any of your own claims and are just dismissing whatever I said as "made up".

the burden of proof is on you to show "left leaning media" reporting on Trump "24/7" *before* his polling dominance and electoral wins occurred.

[LewisVerstappen]

I'm not going to waste my time if you refuse the read the study.

> The above report does not break down anything about "left leaning media" vs. centrist media vs. FOX news

It literally does. Read the study...

"When critics have accused journalists of fueling the Trump bandwagon, members of the media have offered two denials. One is that they were in watchdog mode, that Trump’s coverage was largely negative, that the “bad news” outpaced the “good news.” The second rebuttal is that the media’s role in Trump’s ascent was the work of the cable networks—that cable was “all Trump, all the time” whereas the traditional press held back."

"Neither of these claims is supported by the evidence. Figure 2 shows the news balance in Trump’s coverage during the invisible primary. As can be seen, Trump’s coverage was favorable in all of the news outlets we studied. There were differences from one outlet to the next but the range was relatively small, from a low of 63 percent positive or neutral in The New York Times to a high of 74 percent positive or neutral in USA Today. Across all the outlets, Trump’s coverage was roughly two-to-one favorable."

"By our estimate, Trump’s coverage in the eight news outlets in our study was worth roughly $55 million. Trump reaped $16 million in ad-equivalent space in The New York Times alone, which was more than he spent on actual ad buys in all media during all of 2015. In our eight outlets, the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s coverage was more than one-and-a-half times the ad-equivalent value of Bush, Rubio, and Cruz’s coverage, more than twice that of Carson’s, and more than three times that of Kasich’s. Moreover, our analysis greatly underestimates the ad-equivalent value of Trump’s exposure in that it’s based on only eight media outlets, whereas the whole of the media world was highlighting his candidacy. Senator Cruz might well be correct in claiming that Trump’s media coverage was worth the equivalent of $2 billion in ad buys."

They only included positive/neutral coverage when analyzing ad-equivalent purchases.

[zzzeek]

I read the whole thing. "By our estimate". Where is the data? When did it happen and at what rates? What news sources are called "the left"? note that while I dont consider the New York Times to be very "left", that sentence is using the NYT as an example of how much advertising space costs, not that the NYT itself ran $16 million of coverage directly. Also, the images on this page don't seem to load (example https://shorensteincenter.orgwp-content/uploads/2016/06/figu... . host not resolvable here).

Trump ran for president many times before. Why didn't "the media" create his candidacy all those other times? It's because there were many factors working in favor for him this time, that both matched the message he was giving, as well as that he had himself honed his message with the help of foreign agents like Paul Manafort. Of course "the media" was essential to his win, as they would be to any candidate running at a national level, but they didn't just pick him out of thin air and decide to create a candidacy on a whim.

[Dma54rhs]

You're not wrong, but I personally would like to see the job of being a reporter like public defendant, a lawyer, judge. Sure none of those are non biased either, but at least people try to hold on to that ideal.

This seems like a lazy defense of bad reporters who turned out to become propagandists instead.

[mariodiana]

Alex Jones may indeed be a terrible person, but so what? Government has no business censoring him or anyone from making spurious claims.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Government has no business censoring him or anyone from making spurious claims

The argument is if enough people suffer Sandy Hooks and get harassed by Alex Jones type sycophants, they lose trust in freedom of speech narrowly, democracy broadly, and become more inclined to support a change of pace.

We’re seeing rising support for authoritarianism in part because our system isn’t working for some people. I’m still unsure if the solution is less democracy (to temper swinging majoritarianism) or more, but that unsureness is sort of symptomatic of the argument around not being able to trust institutions. (There are also zero authoritarian regimes in history that tolerated broad freedom of speech.)

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

You could argue that we tend to move in cycles ( things are too loose, up the authority; things are too tight, loosen up ). I am personally horrified that US appears to be somewhat ok with gutting its freedom of speech as much as it can with support of some rather naive helpers, who think that power will not be used against them.

[criddell]

Should Volkswagen be allowed to lie about their diesel engine emissions?

[cloutchaser]

It's not about allowing or not. Anyone can say whatever they want. Then they get sued for fraud.

Free speech != allowing fraud in the legal system. (or any other consequence from speech).

So strictly speaking, yes, you are ALLOWED to say whatever you want, but be prepared for a lot of shit if you lie to people or are wrong. Or be prepared to go to jail if you incite violence or yell fire in a crowded space. (and btw, Alex Jones is bankrupt because of Sandy Hook, to the other posters above).

This free speech = speech without consequences is a silly lie invented by people who want to control speech.

[beej71]

Weren't these all civil suits?

[tomjen3]

A lot more would believe the BBC article. I don't believe that the BBC would do too many direct lies, but you can get very far by selective sourcing and we know the BBC is willing to go very far on issues of omission: they never mentioned Saville being a pedo rapist, fx, probably because it would look bad for them.