Trust in news collapses to historic low
Trust in the news media has fallen to historic lows. The media blames social media and political polarization.
The media hyped chaos that did not happen
By midday Monday, fewer than 1,000 flights were delayed in the U.S. Earlier in the weekend, airlines had canceled hundreds of flights while more than 10,000 were delayed. Source: U.S. flight disruptions finally ease as the holiday weekend winds down They spent the past two weeks telling us that airline travel was in total chaos and the 4th of July weekend would be a total meltdown. it was not. They then began lumping “delayed” flights with the “canceled” numbers –…
Media: They actually did that
GMA/ABC says that Justice Jackson is the first Black Supreme Court Justice. In fact, she is the third.
Fake news: “COVID-19, shootings: Is mass death now tolerated in America?”
Reporter asserts all Covid deaths in the U.S. were preventable. My pointing out that Covid was not controlled anywhere in the world (having accurate data collection and reporting), and my pointing out that 27 other countries had worse outcomes than the U.S. is “denying that the deaths were preventable”. Therefore, you are cautioned that my inconvenient questions and observations are official disinformation, as determined by the Associated Press. Also, remember Betteridge’s Law – any headline that ends in a question mark means the story is bull shit.
Why are rants on social media now news stories?
“Journalists” now pretend they commit journalism by creating a story out of anonymous person’s online rants. Every day we can see fake news stories like this. At best, this is blogging – if even that. It certainly is not journalism.
Reporters lack math and logic skills
NBC publishes a news report on Covid with a glaring simple math and logic problem. Embarrassing.
Hilarious: “What would happen to free speech if Elon Musk bought Twitter?”
Zuckerburg’s ownership of Facebook and Instagram, billionaire Jack Dorsey’s prior control of Twitter, and Jeff Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post are all okay – but Musk buying Twitter to open it up for free speech is bad. These arguments against Musk buying Twitter are not making a lot of sense.
Yesterday’s hyperbolic headline: “Plasma ejections could impact Earth, wreak havoc today” – but we survived
Ridiculous and pointless frightening headline keeps everyone in a state of anxiety and acts as click-bait. This was from more than a day ago. A day later, we – surprise! – survived.
“Black box found”
The “boxes” are called Flight Data Recorders and they are bright orange, not black. But leave it to the media to create an imaginary term out of thin air to describe the data recorders: One of the two black boxes containing data from Monday’s plane crash has been found, Chinese state media said Wednesday. Source: China Eastern Airlines Boeing crash: Black box found Do you wonder how much other stuff the media just makes up on the spot?
“Fact check” Telegram channel is itself fake, used to spread “misinformation”
A Russian Telegram channel purporting to “fact check” reports about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is itself a fake operation used to spread misleading propaganda messaging. Unfortunately, many “fact check” operations, including from professional Western media, are propaganda messaging in a new form. Read this for some background on that.