#News Media

[tobeabatman]

Here’s a quick reminder to all the thin people out there: stop talking about fatness and fat people as if fat people didn’t exist and we weren’t literally right here.

Mostly I see this done whenever thin people talk about ”the obesity epidemic” or ”childhood obesity”. You are a bunch of thin people, a bunch of thin news anchors, a bunch of thin researchers, a bunch of thin commenters online…. Where are fat people’s opinions? Where are fat activists’ opinions? Is it proper journalism to only acknowledge the thin people and their words and their research?

Thin journalists and public figures and news anchors and what have you, milk money out of people by fear-mongering with fat bodies. Famous media doesn’t even want to talk about research that contradicts current ideas of fatness, or fat activists’ words, because readers’ (or watchers’/listeners’) hatred and fear gives them more money (and also less criticism). It pushes this one-sided narrative of fat people’s bodies onto us that thin people control almost completely.

Was the man who on public television said that fat people should try the diet of concentration camp victims, a fat person himself? F*ck no. But we give voice to people like him instead of giving voice to actual fat people (…reminds me of something called oppression).

Whenever you talk about fat people or fatness or weight, remind yourself that we fat people are literally right here. Your audience will never consist purely of thin people.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

If Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives form government after the next federal election, Poilievre will defund the CBC and expand government funding arrangements to include right-wing alternative media outlets. Speaking to right-wing online media personality Candice Malcolm with the website “Juno News” last week, Poilievre indicated he would, in his words, “depoliticize news media finance.” Asked by Malcolm to clarify if he would “get rid of that $600 million newspaper fund that Trudeau gave to newspapers,” Poilievre confirmed he will make unspecified cuts to news industry subsidies but is also interested in expanding which media organizations can access those funds.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[uboat53]

You know, there's been a lot of liberal critique of The New York Times and other mainstream outlets lately accusing them of "normalizing" Trump. These outlets have generally responded that, in the interest of covering all sides, they need to publish pieces from a conservative viewpoint that liberal readers disagree with. They're both right and wrong when they say this and, to understand why, I need to explain how they're repeating exactly the same mistakes they made in 2016.

In 2016, you have to remember, Trump took the GOP by storm. The party itself tried to stop him with both the official party apparatus and peripheral apparatus like FOX News doing their best to diminish his support, but none of it worked. Instead, Trump won the primaries despite never winning more than a plurality in any contested state even while he was still opposed by a huge number of Republicans.

Of course, if you read or watched political news outlets in October of 2016 you wouldn't know any of that, because the immediate action of just about every political news outlet to Trump's nomination was to fire all of their conservative commentators who opposed him and hire a bunch of conservative commentators who supported him. By the time the general election debates were happening, you could be forgiven for thinking that all Democrats supported Clinton and all Republicans supported Trump.

(Note: Nothing similar happened on the Democratic side because nearly all liberal commentators already supported Clinton. Sanders' support in the primaries was surprising, but not overwhelming. He tended to win primaries or caucuses that limited turnout in some way to more enthusiastic supporters while Clinton tended to win primaries that were more broad-based and that was reflected in most of the coverage.)

In other words, by removing the many anti-Trump conservative voices from their air/pages, news organizations gave the impression that all Republicans supported Trump, effectively activating partisan loyalties and subtly encouraging Republicans with doubts about Trump to fall in line. This is what we mean by "normalizing."

They're doing the same thing today. They're not publishing articles where they examine the claims of their MAGA columnists (or their liberal ones for that matter!) and they're not publishing articles about the divides that still remain in the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally (Trump was consistently losing 30%-40% of the vote in 2024 even after it became clear he was going to win), they're just publishing articles arguing for/against Harris and Trump with no deeper analysis whatsoever.

This is why liberals are correct that mainstream political news organizations, even those like The New York Times which are often seen a liberal, are complicit in "normalizing" Trump. These outlets are correct that they need to cover conservative points of view which their liberal readers may find uncomfortable, but they don't have to present them as "the one true conservative" point of view.

By presenting Trump as if he represents all of conservatism rather than just the MAGA faction of conservatism which is staunchly opposed by more traditional conservative factions, these media organizations have fed fuel into a narrative us "us vs. them" which has done as much or more than partisan media to build the partisan polarization of this country.

[relaxedstyles]

[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

[onlytiktoks]

So...

these are all bribes... being called settlements?

[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?

[imams-diary]

Coming soon...

[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).

[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

[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?

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Bonus tell us why in the tags!