#News Media

[relaxedstyles]

[uboat53]

Donald Trump: Has been running for president for years and still refuses to provide any detail about his policy agenda and, when asked about Project 2025, says he supports some parts and opposes others but won't say which.

Kamala Harris: Just entered the race less than a month ago and is still hiring staff and building her campaign.

The Media: Why won't Kamala Harris discuss her policies?

[reasonsforhope]

Hope is something you learn

Here's the thing: I'm not a naturally hopeful person.

I'm not running a good news blog because I've always naturally gravitated toward good news. I'm not running a blog titled "reasons for hope" because hope is something that comes easily to me

It's actually the complete opposite. Teenage me was a giant cynic and a sarcastic pessimist and probably regarded as a killjoy, tbh. Picture a young, bespectacled, well-informed raincloud, maybe, idk. I could find a negative point to undermine just about anything

Nowadays, I'm one of the most hopeful people I know when it comes to the future - especially among people who actually follow the news

So, if you're feeling hopeless or depressed or anxious or despairing - or all and more - about the state of the world, and you're tired of feeling that way, I want you to know that you absolutely do not have to be a naturally hopeful or optimistic person in order to find hope

I got here because I struggled and clawed my way to hope, deliberately, because I needed it desperately. And the start of that path was bookmarking good news websites and checking them every day - which is why I built this blog

Here's the thing: the news, social media, and the human brain itself are all very biased toward negativity. The human brain is wired this way to help us survive things like tiger attacks - and since people are biased toward negative information, they click on it more, so negativity generates way more clicks and makes way more money.

It's a sucky, vicious cycle. But it doesn't accurately reflect reality - that's the whole point of bias.

It's actually kinda irritating that it's true, imho, but your focus really does determine (a lot of) your reality

If you want to have hope, sometimes you need to build it yourself. Even when it's so hard you don't know if you ever can. And then you need to keep building it, because the world isn't static and neither does your brain. Hope needs maintenance, just like everything else

So it's lucky, then, that human beings and the world are both generally better than we think - and certainly better than news or social media is willing to tell us

Sources Human brain negativity bias: x, x, x, x, x, x News negativity bias: x, x, x, x, x Social media negativity bias: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

[newsfromstolenland]

Atlantic Canada's largest newspaper chain is now officially owned by Toronto-based Postmedia Network Inc.

On Monday, Postmedia confirmed the closing of its $1-million purchase of SaltWire Network Inc. and the Halifax Herald Ltd. in a short statement on its website. The sale was approved by a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge on Aug. 8.

Andrew MacLeod, Postmedia's president and CEO, said his company is "delighted" to welcome the new media properties, saying the sale "preserves their vital role within the community."

Full article

Let's explore why this is a very bad thing.

Postmedia, the company that just bought a chain of over two dozen Atlantic canada newspapers, is known for many things- none of them good.

This is an incomplete list of harmful things that Postmedia and its executives have done/are known for:

Right-wing politics. "The National Post was founded in 1998 by Conrad Black, who has connections to conservative politics and sat as a Conservative Party member of the United Kingdom's House of Lords. The Post has always been aligned with the right side of the political spectrum. ..."Just in the past couple of years, Postmedia has issued an edict stating that they should move even farther to the right, so they're very reliably conservative," said [Media journalist Marc] Edge. "In fact, [they] endorse Conservative candidates often over the objections of their local editors.""

Union busting. "They employed a mix of cajoling (such as with buyouts and raises), entreaties to preserve the paper’s uniquely collegial newsroom culture, office-wide memos decrying the havoc a union would wreak, and, according to CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon, one-on-one meetings between staff and management."

Monopolization of canadian news media. "Postmedia Network’s purchase of Saltwire Network will extend its grip from coast to coast, as it already dominates Western Canada with eight of the nine largest dailies in the three westernmost provinces. This purchase will give Postmedia the largest dailies in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland to go along with the largest in New Brunswick, which it acquired from the Irving Oil family two years ago."

Cuts to pensions and benefits while giving large bonuses to executives. "...several top Postmedia executives had received enormous retention bonuses at a time of aggressive belt-tightening (after which many left regardless), and second, the March 2017 announcement that benefits and pensions would be curtailed significantly."

Already beginning to lay off staff from the Atlantic canada newspapers they now own. "...the long-term future of workers in departments like circulation, advertising, customer service, finance and production remains uncertain. "Staff believe maintaining local jobs in the community is critical to retaining both subscribers and clients," the union said. Last week, the union representing workers at The Telegram confirmed that four of the paper's 13 newsroom positions will be eliminated."

More reading: source 1, source 2

Tagging: @allthecanadianpolitics

[tomorrowusa]

The media double standard which overlooks Trump's deteriorating mental state. (from PBS Washington Week - 8/30/24)

JEFFREY GOLDBERG (host and editor of The Atlantic): Here's the thing. I'll make this observation. I'll own it. If Kamala Harris went from bacon to wind in her interview with Dana Bash, she would, this morning, not be -- the next morning, she would not be the nominee of the Democratic Party. That would have been a very, very strange -- people would have been like, what is going on? Do we just have an absurdly low standard now for the things that Donald Trump says and does? DOMENICO MONTANARO (panelist and senior political correspondent at NPR): I think that there is definitely a double standard, and I think part of it is how each side's voters interpret their candidate. And someone like Donald Trump, Republicans have had the opportunity for years to say this is not the guy we want. Instead, they've continued to get behind him. In every primary that Donald Trump weighs in on, he wins, and then the general election a lot of those candidates tend to lose. I think that from reporter's standpoint, we do have to be careful about how we -- what level we hold both of them to. When I fact-checked Donald Trump's hour press conference, he told 162 lies and distortions within that time period, 2.5 a minute, compared to Kamala Harris' DNC acceptance speech, where she had 12 statements that I found were contextually misleading or needed more.

Here's the entire episode.

The media has mostly shrugged off Weird Donald's unhinged rantings as Trump being Trump while holding Democrats to a higher standard.

We need to be more vocal about the double standard. When Trump has another crazed rant about sharks, windmills, electric batteries, and bacon which gets brushed off by a media provider, ask that provider: What would you be saying if a prominent Democrat conducted a similar unhinged rant?

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Those perennial news reports of "The dangers of a sedentary lifestyle" really hit different...

...When you're a full-time wheelchair user.

Like: thanks. But what am I supposed to do with the advice to take a five-minute walk every half hour?

In my head I know there are probably other exercises I could substitute for that -- like arm stretches and reverse sit ups.

But after a while, the consistent assumption that walking is the "simplest" and "lowest impact" exercise available to "everyone" just becomes a reminder of how invisible I am, culturally speaking.

[butch-reidentified]

extremely important piece on the complexity and difficulty of trying to get the public to give a shit about protecting Native spaces, practices, cultures, etc. without compromising the privacy and boundaries of said communities

[bonesashesglass]

https://x.com/thecradlemedia/status/1837548818612494837?s=46&t=9u7dtsvl8XZD8A7j2V6ckA

Right now, Israel is dropping massive bombs on civilian areas in Lebanon 💔

Please, spread and share this news. US media will try to bury it, don’t let them. Make them feel our rage

[alyfoxxxen]

Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won? | The New Republic

this very much explains what i've been seeing as someone who lives between big cities and rural conservative communities

[wojakgallery]

Title/Name: Soy Boy being brainwashed by the news media Wojak Series: Soyjak (Variant) Image by: Unknown Main Tag: Soy Boy Wojak

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Bonus tell us why in the tags!

[luulapants]

One thing that really struck me this past week, watching our beautiful, brave young folks rising up at campuses around the world, is the promise of student journalists.

The coverage, lack of coverage, and disinformation campaigns about Gaza since October has brought home to so many of us how useless our modern media has become. 24 hour news cycles, and they're not allowed to say anything important. 24 hour propaganda machines. The reporters inside the machine, even if they want to speak out, are silenced. They've been rendered completely incapable of meaningfully covering some of the most important events going on in the US today.

But student newspapers are running livestreams. They're giving timely updates on what's happening in their encampments. They're reporting unbiased facts of what is occurring in front of them. I watched a student journalist live stream an encampment near me - miserable rain, middle of the night, terrified tear gas would be deployed soon. The chat had to keep reminding him to identify himself, but he stood out there in it and told us what he saw and explained everything in a calm, factual manner. Some conservative adult pestering in the chat asked him what the paper's position on the encampment was. He said, "We don't have a position, sir, we're reporting the news."

That's the future of journalism right there. I finally cancelled my subscription to my town's shitty newspaper that night and I'll be donating to the student newspaper instead. There are a lot of changes that need to happen in the wake of this moment. I hope to God a revolution in our media is one of them.

[detroitpedxing]

Alito Set to Destroy Republicans’ Trump-Packed Supreme Court Dreams

Justice Samuel Alito has slammed the door on overeager Republicans’ hopes for a Trump-packed Supreme Court. 

With Republicans inching toward trifecta control of the House, Senate, and White House after their sweeping victory last week, the party has now turned its attention to the nation’s highest court. Republicans will have at least two years of uninhibited ability to mold the Supreme Court in their image, especially if conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito—76 and 74, respectively—get the message and step down. 

But Alito quickly shut down rumors of his retirement. 

“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” a friend of Alito told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is.”

Alito was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and has been a bastion of conservative originalism ever since. He penned the opinion on the devastating overturning of Roe v. Wade, something that was made possible in part thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing away in 2020, after stubbornly refusing calls to step down during President Barack Obama’s term—giving President Donald Trump the conservative majority needed to overturn the crucial reproductive rights law.  

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 70, has also faced calls for her to step down, but she has no plans to retire either.

[uboat53]

You know, the media is full of op-eds right now declaring this or that to be the reason that Democrats lost, but I think we have to recognize that the fact that a disturbing amount of Americans are only learning NOW what a tariff is indicates that the media's poor coverage of the actual issues of the campaign may have had something to do with it.

[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

This @cnn article is absolutely despicable - and indicative of how most media is willing to whitewash jen aside so long as it’s profitable for the billionaire class. There’s no behavior so grotesque that they won’t excuse, even bulldozing people alive and more or less bragging about it.

Repost from @everydaypalestine

•

Mainstream Media is complicit in this gen•cide.

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

Talking (U.S.) Politics

I'm frustrated by the Mainstream Press following Trump's lead and complaining that Kamala Harris hasn't held a press conference, yet, to talk about specifics of her policy positions, or campaign party platform.

For all the presidential campaigns I remember, from my lifetime (starting in 1976), presidential candidates never finalized their campaign platforms or policy positions until after their national conventions (figuring out what the campaign platforms should be is the main reason for holding a convention, in the first place -- that's where the party delegates, who were voted for in the primaries, meet to reach consensus on the platform in the first place).

And the Democratic National Convention doesn't even start until August 19, 2024 (it's August 17 as I type this).