The Failing Media is Failing Dismally, Yet Again

An opinion columnist for the New York Times has written a piece arguing that the media should stop airing the president's briefings. For over a year it seemed reasonable to me to stop broadcasting almost everything the president says to the American people. The reason is obvious: His rhetoric consists mostly of socially damaging and immoral, dark free speech.[1] What social value is there in his lies, deflections and disinformation that outweighs the damage? I see none.

The NYT opinion piece comments:

“Around this time four years ago, the media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks what is known as ‘earned media’ coverage of political candidates. Earned media is free media. 

The firm computed that Donald Trump had ‘earned’ a whopping $2 billion of coverage, dwarfing the value earned by all other candidates, Republican and Democrat, even as he had only purchased about $10 million of paid advertising. 

The Hollywood Reporter in February of 2016 quoted CBS’s C.E.O. as saying, ‘It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,’ because as The Reporter put it, ‘He likes the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.’”

The editorial points out that the daily coronavirus briefings over the last 5 weeks or so have been aired extensively. They are are full of misleading and false statements, deceptions, deflections of blame from his own failures and assertions of no responsibility for his own crucial role in the failed US response to the virus. The president has scientists and officials on stage with him to lend a false appearance of credibility to his dark free speech. People trapped indoors due to coronavirus are nervous and tune into the daily dark free speech blizzard.

The press is not obligated by any law to broadcast any, some or all of what a president says. Journalism requires editing and commentary on content, including the pointing out of lies and deceit. Simply broadcasting the president’s self-serving propaganda isn't journalism. It is abdication of journalism. It is anti-journalism.

The president’s open contempt for and denial of inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning is undeniable and of staggering proportions. As of April 3, 2020, the president had made 18,000 false or misleading statements. That qualifies him as a chronic liar, which is something he has probably been at least his entire adult life.

In essence, the media has learned nothing. Once again, the for-profit American broadcast media is one of the president’s most important sources of campaign exposure, lies, deceit and deflections. The media is simply giving him hundreds of millions or billions of free, unrebutted air time.

The NYT editorial ends with this accurate characterization of the situation:

“Trump has completely politicized this pandemic and the briefings have become a tool of that politicization. He is standing on top of nearly 40,000 dead bodies and using the media to distract attention away from them and instead brag about what a great job he’s done.”

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

WITH PERMISSION from Germaine, a SNOWFLAKE RANT.

WHAT THE F IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE??

I keep reading comments from some contributors on various channels,  that are anti-government.

I keep hearing about protestors who claim that the government has no right to tell them to stay home during Covid 19, because they have a "constitutional right" to keep their shops open or go to work.

EXAMPLE:

I was listening to a radio call in show, where a caller raged about being told he can't open his business because of his "constitutional rights" and when the host of the show reminded the caller that "rights" aren't absolute, that you can't yell "fire" in a movie theater, carry an AK 27 through a mall, or punch your own kid on the side of the head, the caller retorted that he was not about to give up his "constitutional rights" for the sake of some geriatrics who are going to die anyways.

SAY WHAT?

This canard that the government should stay out of your business, that less government is the best way to go, is SO OLD it is laughable.

This lack of responsibility is what has led to the crisis we have in the U.S. now where Trump says testing is up to the States, and State governors are being ridiculed for stay-at-home orders, while the death toll climbs.

What these folks are really saying, is I don't want government interfering in what I consider important, but please interfere when I want something done my way.

Outlaw abortion, close abortion clinics, isn't this government interference?

Collect my garbage, bring me my mail, police my streets, isn't that government interference?

Keep government out of my healthcare, because I don't want health care for all, because dontcha know, that is socialism.

YET every other civilized country in the world has some form of health care for all, delivering better health care, at a lower per capita cost than what we have in the good ole U.S. of A.

AND don't even try to deflect or argue semantics, it is A FACT. When you have thousands of people in a civilized nation going broke because of medical bills, you know something is wrong.

WE have laws to protect our property and lives, who wrote those laws? GOVERNMENT!

And yet the same people who cry to the high heavens about getting government out of our lives, love it when that same government engages in gerrymandering, voter suppression, closing of voting booths (primarily in black districts), and purges voter rolls - because the simple idea of anyone who can produce a birth certificate or proof of citizenship can not get a federal ID card because THAT is government interference?????

Almost everyone who has ever argued with me on the subject of government involvement into our lives keeps citing the Constitution, yet - here is the irony - WHO WROTE THE CONSTITUTION? I am guessing some government types. 

Interviews With a Few of the President's Supporters

The human condition in politics

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.” -- Democracy For Realists: Why Elections do not Produce Responsive Governments, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, 2016

This 13-minute interview with a series of the president's supporters shows the level of reasoning that a small sample appears to operate with. Not all of the president's supporters think like this, but at least some, maybe most, clearly do. This mindset looks to be much more ideological and tribal than fact-based and rational.

How can one enter into a rational dialogue with people like this? How does one respond to a person who flat out rejects facts and sound reasoning in favor of dark free speech and tribe loyalty?

FTLDS: Fact, Truth & Logic Deficit Syndrome

Trust me I’m a deranged crackpot and I have FTLDS

As we all know, we are experiencing an epidemic of FTLDS among the American people. One example is the president relying on a young promoter of reality-detached, socially divisive, crackpot conspiracies and lies. The New York Times writes that a couple of days ago the president retweeted 11 of the liar’s tweets:

“The tweets by Mr. Kirk, 26, who runs Turning Point USA, a conservative student group, hit just the right marks for the president. One tweet accused the World Health Organization of covering up the coronavirus outbreak, and upbraided Democrats for opposing the president’s decision to cut the group’s funding. Another claimed Democrats were appeasing Beijing and not doing enough to help Americans left jobless by the pandemic. A few covered some of the president’s longstanding grievances, such as the conviction of Roger Stone and claims of voter fraud. A well-worn conspiracy theory about Hunter Biden’s dealings with China even made an appearance. ..... In fact, Mr. Trump first introduced his more than 77 million Twitter followers to the phrase “China Virus” in a retweet of a post by Mr. Kirk on March 10 that linked two Trumpian obsessions: China and the border wall. “Now more than ever, we need the wall. With China Virus spreading across the globe, the U.S. stands a chance if we can control our borders,” Mr. Kirk wrote.” 

The far right conservative student group earned an unacceptably low fact accuracy rating, which I define as a Mixed or lower rating.

That the president of the USA has turned to a radical right crackpot conspiracy theorist and incoherent liar for socially divisive talking points is evidence of how bad the FTLDS epidemic has become. Fact, truth and sound reasoning[1] have been infected and destroyed by this virulent social pestilence. The damage it can cause is potentially catastrophic.

Unfortunately, there is no treatment or vaccine on the horizon because federal law free speech bars any meaningful attempts to treat the cause of the disease (lies, deceit, dark free speech) or at least reduce its severity. Lies and crackpot conspiracies cannot be taxed or impeded in any way and thus unvaccinated Americans are vulnerable to this heinous scourge.


Footnote:
1. Technically, humans do not use formal logic in their normal thinking. Instead they apply reasoning. Reasoning consists mostly of biased unconscious thinking and sometimes some usually biased conscious thinking. For politics, reasoning is usually more illogical than logical. Thus, the president's young new political strategist comments that building the wall on the Mexican border will control the pandemic is not an application of logic. He is applying biased reasoning to arrive at illogical and false beliefs and statements.

News and Truthiness...

I was looking at some old correspondence between me and my beloved uncle, who passed away about 5 years ago.  I sure miss him.  One of his question to me was: “Why is the truth not required when reporting the news?”  Here was my answer:

(Tap or click on pages to enlarge)

So let me ask you the same question(s):

 

-Why is actual truth not required when reporting news? 

-Do any of my answers especially hit home with you and/or can you add some more reasons to the list?

-Wouldn’t you always rather hear the actual truth, rather than spin?

Thanks for posting and recommending.

The WHO: Clarifying the Blame Game

The president and his Trump Party desperately want to shift all blame for their incompetence and long-standing anti-government ideology for the botched US response to the coronavirus pandemic. Part of the conservative-populist blame game is directed to, among other miscreants, the Chinese government, president Obama, the impeachment, democrats, and the World Health Organization (WHO). It helps to keep things in context and informed by facts and sound reasoning instead of partisan self-serving lies and bogus reasoning.

The WHO is dedicated to disseminating information about science-based truth about diseases and health conditions that plague the human condition. It is a critically important source of global information about epidemics. Its mission is not to allow politics to derail or dilute science that may be inconvenient for any political ideology, leader, tyrant, blowhard or movement. The WHO says this about its mission: “WHO works worldwide to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable. Our goal is to ensure that a billion more people have universal health coverage, to protect a billion more people from health emergencies, and provide a further billion people with better health and well-being.”

The US supports WHO to the tune of about $500 million/year, but the US legal obligation by treaty is closer to about $115 million. The president attacks the WHO as “very China-centric.” That has nothing to do with the failures of the president and his Trump Party enablers. The US was informed early on about the extreme seriousness of what was coming.

WHO’s China centricity 

The best propaganda often or usually contains a kernel of truth. That kernel is what demagogues, tyrants and kleptocrats always look for as something to exploit in their endless stream of dark free speech.

Unfortunately, the WHO has allowed Chinese and some other non-science to pass as science. Politics trumped science and that egregious mistake needs to be reversed. In the case of China’s traditional Chinese medicine, which is unproven ‘alternative’ medical treatments, the WHO stated that the goal of WHO policy “is to promote the safe and effective use of traditional medicine by regulating, researching and integrating traditional medicine products, practitioners and practice into health systems, where appropriate.”

An astoundingly anti-science article in Nature in 2018 approved of WHO quackery and wrote this lunacy about treatment of diabetes,

“The patient, who would probably be diagnosed as diabetic by a Western doctor, would probably be prescribed acupuncture, various tonics and moxibustion — in which practitioners burn herbs near the skin of the patient. Spinach tea, celery, soya beans and other ‘cooling’ foods would also be recommended.”

Moxibustion? Really? Yup really, but for breech babies, only close to the skin of the fifth toes of both feet.

The president’s attack on the WHO: Walking a tightrope

Thus, there is a kernel of truth in the president’s criticism of the WHO as too China-centric. The WHO’s acceptance of nonsense and acceptance of blatant quackery over science cannot be defended or rationally explained.[1]

That probably is the unspoken basis of the conservative American attack on the WHO. That said, it seems highly unlikely to me that conservatives or the president would directly state that directly. If they did say that WHO acceptance of Chinese quackery is proof of some sort of bad or evil China-centric bias, it would also be an implicit attack on the multi-billion dollar counterpart American quackery industry. This aspect of conservative attacks on the WHO in their desperate attempt to deflect blame from themselves and the president needs to be understood. Their central, years-long role in royally screwing up America's response to the coronavirus pandemic and the needless deaths has to be shielded by deflections, lies and whatever other dark free speech they think will work for them in the 2020 elections. Truth and honest free speech are not on their side.


Footnote:
1. People who believe in unproven traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and/or alternative treatments in the West (nutritional supplements, neutraceuticals, unapproved stem cell treatments, etc.) vehemently disagree that there is no rational explanation. Some of them point to lots of anecdotal evidence parading as proof and/or statistically significant evidence from the few existing reasonably sized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trials as proof of efficacy. In almost no case is a plausible mechanism of action for clinical benefit stated. And when a plausible mechanism of action posited, the supporting data is usually (~98% of the time) statistically weak.

Despite the counterevidence, they KNOW that such treatments are effective and not quackery. I've have many engagements with believers on this and find that, like politics, minds in disagreement are unchangeable. Their beliefs are no less sincere or firmly held than people who sincerely and firmly believe that the Earth is flat, the Moon landing was faked, vaccines are toxic and ineffective, the president is a good, honest and/or patriotic person going a good or great job, or that the Earth is ~6,000 - 10,000 years old according to infallible biblical calculations. The human mind is capable of firmly believing all sorts of things, mostly or completely true, mostly or completely false, ambiguous, not proven, not provable, nutty, bizarre and a perception of goodness in flat out evil.