and disinformation is social media, it's all about confusing the citizenry about what party most reflects our values and where we want this country to be.

GOTV

And don't realize how much of it is bunk.

hopefully this article reaches more. It's basically a reality check.

It further confirms that corporate media polls are the shits comprised of endless lies along with attacks on President Biden, VP Harris and the Democratic Party.

Corporate media is there with them, all of which are putting Democracy at risk.

And thus ensues the distrust in government and institutions because the media is publishing entertainment instead of following journalism ethics and norms.

now that Nicolle Wallace is on leave. I'm down to getting my news from Stephanie Miller and Thom.

I may have to watch a little bit of Laurence O'Donnell when he has good guests on.

..from 9am-3pm EST. You can stay informed and avoid tons of bullshit. Stephanie will make you laugh and Thom will give you facts and the back story. Saves you a lot of time and unnecessary angst.

Corporate influence of reporting in the M$M is not a new thing, hopefully in the coming year, many more USAmericans will learn more about it and start critically reading and watching the news

We need to update the laws. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has been a blight on this country's media for too long.

Just a few facts about it for your perusal.

Both chambers had Republican majorities for the first time since the 83rd Congress in 1953. Newton Leroy Gingrich served as speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1998.
The bill was a relaxation of cross-ownership rules and a near-total rollback of New Deal market regulation. Looking back five years after the bill was passed, the Consumers Union reported that wire to wire competition, the reason that sold the bill, had not succeeded as legislators had hoped.

Warren J. Sirota, criticized the media's coverage of the bill. He wrote that: "Rightfully, this major change in the nation's regulatory structure is receiving considerable media and press attention. Unfortunately...most of the attention is going to the wrong issue, the Decency Act." The Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano commented..."Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few."

Hey, sex sells, right? Boldened script excerpted from Wikipedia. Thanks, Wickey and say hello to Winnie.

The Telecommunications Act of '96 was supposed to increase competition in the media, media consolidation has only increased.

From the wiki cited above:

"...to provide for a pro-competitive, de-regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced telecommunications and information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition..."

That's what it was supposed to accomplish. However, as with all de-regulatory legislation passed by Congress promising to increase competition and lower consumer costs, it did the opposite.

"promising to increase competition and lower consumer costs, it did the opposite." By design

The M$M would not be on the receiving end of billions of dollars in political advertising. Election time for the M$M is analogous to the Holiday shopping season for retailers.

I watch him, Al Jazeera English, BBC, some of MSNBC, Stephanie, and a few others. I read mostly.

It's very true, what he's saying. And pretty blatant.

Because, you know, we have so many progressive outlets for our liberal voices.

I've always loved Thom since I read The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. I even plowed through Unequal Protection one summer.

Ha ha. I'm responding to your 666th post.

I'll have to pick those up! Though mostly I spend my time on art....about to do that just now!

Thank you for responding to that magickal post!

Cackle...

I worked as a cashier in college & three times the customers' total came to $6.66 & all three times the customers added something to the order to change the total.

There's an artists group on DU. Some talented people here share their work.

I've shared a little there....soon to share again! And I love looking and commenting on the art! Need to step over there later!

Off to art!

The OP is, though, really about the Columbia Journalism Review - Hartmann is just giving a one paragraph commentary on it (with a breathless clickbait lede of "actively working against our democracy" - really, they are selling coverage of little or no use, not "actively working against our democracy" ).

Here's the original:

One that is much too often ignored here, in favor of clickbait and hyperbole.

As for RT, the excuse that other outlets aren't available is nonsense. Providing legitimacy to state-owned propaganda is never OK, and no one on the left should be using it as a platform. People are willing to forgive pretty much anything as long as it fits an agenda.

And what percentage of the near half of voters wanting Trump back in office, read the Times or the Post or even care about specific policy positions?

The "palace intrigue" is the story...the 2018, 2020, 2022 elections were choices between democracy and autocracy, as will be the 2024 election. I think the Times and Post are trying to accent that "policy" and hope they continue to do so.

Pay No Way
For distortions and manufactured news.
LET THEM EAT FAKE.
Money.

I use two link aggregators: DU and Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com/newest)

I heavily filter DU because so much of it is flame wars lately. So be it.

Hacker News is heavily tech and science, but since it is “owned” by a VC, and appeals to startup people and devs of every sort, it has a wide variety of programming, science, tech in the news (AI, SBF) and so on, plus a few “lounge” kinds of articles, daily.

Not for the tech faint of heart. It was my living, and I actuallty read about 20 articles a day out of some 200 or so posted.

Both DU and Hacker News are moderated to keep the self-promotion and flame wars down. DU, a little less so these days.

_____

These link aggregators offer a wide variety of information, in text form, so it’s low emotional response (compared to TV and video …. I am going to find browser extensions that not only stop autoplay but kills the videos altogether)

I don’t see any one site providing “windows” to such a wide variety ot information, pick and choose outside of aggregators.

As for modding, I have no block rules on Hacker News, though some RW links show up. I just ignore them, as the format only allows one line descriptions and the mods ask people to provide useful info on that line, not just “MUST SEE” or “WOW” as some people do here.

I was thinking of collecting those 20 or so links that intrigue me, and sharing them, but collecting links is tedious, and I should write some script to automate the process after dragging URLS to a folder.

Being able to do some quick programming (i.e. in bash, perl, etc) is pretty empowering. For example, I can convert an entire folder of webp files to jpeg or png with one command.

Love DU of course; really love Hacker News! Sometimes I just screenshot the article titles because they are so perfect. And hilarious.

I found a trove of interesting stuff on HN this morning, but I decided to hit the great outdoors and clear more brush that was obscuring manzanita trees (which are gorgeous) and that took most of the day.

I’ll try to post some tomorrow, maybe in the afternoon.

Try the “best” link.
https://news.ycombinator.com/best
It shows the top rated recent posts. I sometimes miss a real good one in all the noise (heck, there are over 200 posts a day). So right now, I found a raw photo editing package, Ansel. Top of the list.

I’ll have to boot up linux to run it right now. No problemo. I have an older mac mini that should do fine.
I get such great results with the mac Preview app (and now and then GIMP for advanced editing) that I haven’t used DarkTable or RawTherapee yet. Those might be more than I need, so I’ll check out Ansel a bit later on.

“Photographer with a chain saw”. I edit scenes with chainsaws. Good for annoying foreground removal.

Based on that review.

❤️

[link:?1547315703|

[ ... ]
These numbers are staggering in terms of the complete retreat they represent from issues-orientated campaign coverage. Just eight years ago, the last time both parties nominated new candidates for the White House, the network newscasts devoted 220 minutes to issues coverage, compared to only 32 minutes so far this year. (CBS Evening News went from 119 minutes of issues coverage in 2008 to 16 this year.)

Note that during the Republican primary season alone, the networks spent 333 minutes focusing on Donald Trump. Yet for all of 2016, they have set aside just one-tenth of that for issue reporting.

And look at this: Combined, the three network newscasts have slotted 100 minutes so far this year for reporting on Hillary Clinton’s emails while she served as secretary of state, but just 32 minutes for all issues coverage. (NBC’s Nightly News has spent 31 minutes on the emails this year; just eight minutes on issues.)

[ ... ]

Never had The post. I read DU.

something they printed was so trump one sided and it pissed me off so much that i was done paying for their bullshit.

Policy does not change very often - there is little news.
2. In the case of Trump there is no policy. It is all intrigue.
3. Speculation - what a second Trump Presidency would mean for America, belongs in the Opinion column. There is no way to 'inform' the public - Only to present speculative analysis.

Though whether a lot of these horse-race polls are really "news" is questionable as well... but that's a different argument.

These papers do occasionally run features that go into policy with some depth. But as you say, policy doesn't change much day-to-day. If they run a feature on health care policy one day, they're obviously not going to run it again the next day. They probably won't run another until there's some new major public policy debate about it. What do people expect of a daily newspaper? Mainly they are the proverbial first draft of history. You can't blame them for not being great at something they weren't designed to be in the first place. There's a reason there's the saying that nothing is as useless as yesterday's newspaper.

Luckily we have the internet, where you can find all the policy detail you want... including archives of the policy pieces these papers do occasionally do. It may not be perfect either, but that's not the fault of the Times or the Post. This is blaming them for a not solving a problem they weren't designed to solve.

Stomach turning, or what? Main Stream Media, my arse. Manipulative Shits Media!

The Fairness Doctrine is not what most people say it is. Broadcaster Thom Hartmann regularly emphasizes this point and explains what it actually is when callers call in with comments over it like it would solve everything. It has, however, led to this corporate infotainment environment by removing the requirement of offering contrasting views on matters of public importance.

Quoting Thom Hartmann “because the main way that stations ‘programmed in the public interest’ was by producing news, real, actual, non-infotainment news, once Reagan lifted that requirement, the news divisions of the various networks came under the sway of ratings and profits.”

reinstating it would essentially solve this corporate media problem/bias.

The New York Times' first article about Hitler's rise is absolutely stunning
By Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchampzack@vox.com Updated Mar 3, 2016, 10:44am EST

On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It's an incredible read — especially its assertion that "Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded." This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler's anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses.

Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler's early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: "He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness."

But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism. Brown acknowledges Hitler's vicious anti-Semitism as the core of Hitler's appeal — and notes the terrified Jewish community was fleeing from him — but goes on to dismiss it as a play to satiate the rubes (bolding mine):

He is credibly credited with being actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism. He probably does not know himself just what he wants to accomplish. The keynote of his propaganda in speaking and writing is violent anti-Semitism. His followers are nicknamed the "Hakenkreuzler." So violent are Hitler's fulminations against the Jews that a number of prominent Jewish citizens are reported to have sought safe asylums in the Bavarian highlands, easily reached by fast motor cars, whence they could hurry their women and children when forewarned of an anti-Semitic St. Bartholomew's night.
...
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/11/8016017/ny-times-hitler

I also saw (on DU I think) that suggested not following polls and pundits: and, instead, watch the book makers in Vegas.

It was very interesting take where Biden’s odds are better than dump’s.

I think something like 8 points better for Joe.

I am a dog on a bone, bashing polls. Polls are used for propaganda. I do believe in exit polling and when exit polling doesn't jive with actual results then I start asking, was voting done on ES&S machines? There were anomalies in 3 states the last election.

The oddsmakers had Trump as an overwhelming favorite from election 2016 until mid-2019.

They weren't any more accurate early in the cycle than the polls were. There's no reason to believe they're any more accurate at this point in this cycle, either.

If you want to be informed he is a must. If you just want to follow the right wing narrative and comment negatively on it then by all means do cable news.

We have to find a way to win, despite the press narrative.

... that this study was conducted on reporting just before the election and only covered the front page. Of course these stories are going to be focused on the horse race - this is the final lap, the last inning, the end round. It's the horse race, the pitch and swing, and the blow by blow that everyone wants to read about. And its the FRONT PAGE - you don't put detailed policy analysis and opinion pieces on the front page. You put the latest, most recent, twists, turns, maneuvers and stumbles on the front page. All those policy and opinion pieces go in the back - which is where they belong.

So, we lost an election, and it was a real loss, with bad consequences. So we need to find someone or something - most assuredly someone other than ourselves - to blame. It MUST be the newspapers! Or maybe Facebook. Yep, that's the ticket!

It does this in almost all political issues. They don't write or talk about the substance of the issue, just that politician X said this and Politician Y said that. Rarely will they explain the contents of a Presidential order or congressional bill or the consequences of them.

A tradition of comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted in order to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217421269

US news media is not the best in the world!

Commercial newspapers in a competitive capitalist economy exist to turn a profit first, inform readers of what’s important second. They are not “actively” trying to destroy democracy, it is a byproduct of selling shit stories of commercial interest to “their” readers.

It isn’t the newspapers, it’s the unfair arena of competition. More money buys better media, so the most money wins the media battle in most cases.

That wasn’t the case before Ronald Reagan and the Republicans ditched the Fairness Doctrine, which put the interests of the public over the interests of greedy capitalists. Now, any moron with $44 billion, for example, can simply buy an ideological competitor and run it into the ground. There is no need of fairness when fairness is measured in $$$.

Trashing the Post and Times is won’t make the rules of capitalism different, and ignores whatever benefit many readers get from them.

I'm the only one that knows who Jordan, Boebert, etc, is... Gaetz, 3 toes, etc, not a single name is recognized. We care here on DU and get all worked up, but average folks in southern Oregon, eastern Oregon, no idea who you're talking about. My guess is every other blue stae rural area is the very same. These voters don't care about this stuff. We need a Dem ground assault and we need it Big time!