#Parker Molloy

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Parker Molly at The Present Age:

If you've ever felt like reality is starting to resemble a poorly written sci-fi novel, you're not alone. Lately, scrolling through social media feels less like catching up on the news and more like navigating a minefield of conspiracy theories and outright fabrications. The platform once known as Twitter—now rebranded as X under Elon Musk's ownership—has become the epicenter of this unsettling shift. Two compelling articles in The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel's "I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is" and Renée DiResta's "Rumors on X Are Becoming the Right’s New Reality", delve into how Musk's X is fast-tracking our plunge into a post-reality society. Let's start with Warzel's harrowing account of Hurricanes Milton and Helene—natural disasters that devastated communities across the Gulf Coast. As if the storms weren't destructive enough, a torrent of disinformation flooded social media. Alex Jones, never one to miss a chance to peddle nonsense, claimed the hurricanes were "weather weapons" unleashed by the U.S. government. Verified accounts on X shared CGI videos of colossal tornadoes as if they were real, racking up millions of views before anyone bothered to question their authenticity. "Scrolling through these platforms, watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories, and doctored images—all while panicked residents boarded up their houses... offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on," Warzel writes.

It's not just about misinformation; it's about a collective willingness to abandon reality in favor of sensationalism. Politicians and influencers exploited these crises for political gain, spreading lies about FEMA's relief efforts and stoking distrust in government institutions. The result? FEMA workers and meteorologists faced harassment and death threats, hampering relief efforts when they were needed most. DiResta takes us deeper into the rabbit hole, examining how X has become ground zero for right-wing propaganda, fueled by baseless rumors and amplified by political elites—including Elon Musk himself. Imagine scrolling through your feed and coming across claims that FEMA is abandoning Trump supporters, Democrats are manipulating the weather, or Haitian immigrants are eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio. Sounds absurd, right? Yet these unfounded stories have gained significant traction on X. "Political influencers, elites, and prominent politicians on the right are embracing even pathologically outlandish claims made by their base," DiResta observes. "They know that amplifying online rumors carries little cost—and offers considerable political gain."

What's truly alarming is how high-profile figures are legitimizing these fringe beliefs. Musk, for instance, has used his platform to spread unverified claims about FEMA, suggesting without evidence that the agency is "actively blocking shipments and seizing goods" intended for hurricane victims. His posts have been viewed tens of millions of times, further muddying the waters between reality and fiction.

[...] DiResta points out that while Musk may have initially envisioned X as a politically neutral platform, that's far from the current reality. "As Musk has drifted to the right—his profile picture now features him in a MAGA hat—the platform he rebranded as X has become the center of a right-wing political culture built upon a fantastical rumor mill," she writes.

It's like watching the captain of a ship steer directly into an iceberg while insisting he's charting a bold new course. With just weeks to go before the election, the distortion of reality on platforms like X isn't just a digital problem; it's a societal crisis with far-reaching implications for democracy. Warzel warns that Americans are "divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all." When a significant portion of the population operates under a completely different set of "facts," reaching consensus or making informed decisions becomes nearly impossible. It's like trying to play a game of chess when half the players insist the pieces are actually checkers—and the board is on fire. So, what can we do to combat this slide into unreality? Both Warzel and DiResta suggest that addressing this crisis requires a multifaceted approach. It's not enough to debunk falsehoods; we need to rebuild trust in institutions and promote media literacy.

DiResta emphasizes the need for leadership: "Without a concerted push to defend truth—by leaders, institutions, and the public—the rumor mill will continue to churn, and its distortions will become the foundation of an irreparably divided political landscape." For us as individuals, this means critically evaluating the information we consume and especially that which we share. Support reputable journalism. Hold platforms accountable for the content they amplify. Elon Musk's Twitter takeover has turned what was once a platform for real-time news and open dialogue into a hotbed of disinformation and propaganda. The success of this reality-twisting machine poses a direct threat to the upcoming election and to the very concept of a shared reality. In this critical moment, staying anchored to reality isn't just a personal responsibility—it's a collective one. The future of our democracy may very well depend on our ability to navigate this post-truth landscape, challenge falsehoods, and reaffirm our commitment to objective reality.

This column from Parker Molloy on X under Elon Musk being a right-wing cesspit leading America and the world into a post-truth hellscape.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Great points from @ParkerMolloy on the media's “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements https://newrepublic.com/article/185530/media-criticism-trump-sanewashing-problem

[thatstormygeek]

A responsible press would either decide that whatever real backlash there is to a comedian’s special isn’t newsworthy; if it is newsworthy, it would cover it through the frame of engaging with whatever specific criticisms there are, not knee-jerk “free speech” framing despite lack of a “free speech” issue. But we do not have a responsible press. We have a press that loves chaos and controversy. We have a press that frames everything as a “culture war,” in which two equally valid sides score points. So they love this stuff. The result of this is a slew of comedians who pose as far more edgy than they actually are.

But at the risk of stating the obvious, the fact that the world’s biggest comedians are getting paid massive amounts of money by some of the most powerful companies in media to record these variations on the same jokes that others have told for years already… should probably lead us to tap the brakes on the “OooOoOoh, they’re so edgy!” claims.

The whole piece is so good (and if you hit the paywall and want more, I have a handful of 3 month subscriptions I can share), but I also wanted to put a spotlight on this comment because it really cuts through some bullshit:

[macwantspeace]

Parker Molloy included screen grabs of the most egregious. Such as:

Yeah, the official trump/vance campaign saying, "migrants ravage city". [well that escalated quickly] Next thing you know some musket humper is gonna go down to the park with a load of ammo.

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[charliejaneanders]

I’ve watched in horror for the past several years as Republican lawmakers, “contrarian” writers, and right-wing pundits have targeted LGBTQ people. I’ve watched as Republican politicians try, repeatedly and sometimes successfully, to enshrine anti-trans sentiment into law while many (not all) of the “good” politicians on the Democratic side turn a blind eye to the horrors happening. All the while, mainstream news organizations take the disingenuous Republican arguments at face value (remember when they all pretended to care about women’s sports earlier in the year? And now they’re pretending to care about, uh… bone density for trans kids? Okay, sure, right, right), making it near impossible to actually cut through the smears.

What will journalism look like in 2023?

[burritosandpeppermint]

Excellent read, lots of good stuff here.

[autisticwolfesbrainisautistic]

I highly recommend following Parker Molloy's newsletter, The Present Age, for news coverage. Her latest post about David Zaslav's implicit endorsement for Trump and the impact the oligarchs who own news orgs have on media coverage, both explicitly and implicitly is great, and her other writing is equally fantastic. Her coverage of trans issues (being trans herself) is also excellent.

"'Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business. …'

Did he endorse Trump? Not by name, but there’s effectively no difference. …

Given Zaslav’s remarks and his position of influence, it’s crucial to scrutinize how these economic imperatives could affect CNN’s (and other news organizations’) coverage, especially in the run-up to a highly contentious presidential election. The concern is not just about overt bias, but about the subtler, structural biases that emerge when a media organization’s leadership has clear political and economic preferences."

[incorrectlighttreasonquotes]

I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy making up a song in my head about how mac and cheese were best friends.

Parker

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Craig Harrington at MMFA:

When Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump meet for the September 10 debate, the public will hopefully gain some perspective into both candidates’ plans to deploy the immense powers of the presidency. If the past nine years have been any indicator of what to expect from Trump, the disgraced ex-president will go off on a confusing tangent if pressed for a specific answer on any number of policy issues, and mainstream reporters covering the debate will meticulously parse Trump’s addled statements to divine meaning from the mess. This predictable process played out for all to see last week as mainstream news outlets struggled to cover Trump's September 5 appearance at The Economic Club of New York, which included a dangerously incoherent response to a simple question about child care policy that stunned many observers and attendees.

News outlets “sanewashed” Trump’s incoherent appearance at The Economic Club of New York

In their coverage of Trump’s appearance last week at The Economic Club of New York, the major broadcast evening news programs completely failed to inform viewers about the disgraced ex-president’s dangerously incoherent response to a simple question about child care policy.

There is a name for this type of sanitized coverage — “sanewashing” — and it’s a disservice to the public.

On September 5, Trump appeared at The Economic Club of New York for an event hosted by the group’s board and trustees. Over the course of more than an hour of often-confusing and disorganized remarks, Trump touched on various economic, tax, and trade policy talking points with a particular focus on making tariffs (taxes paid by consumers on imported goods) a centerpiece of his second term agenda. At the end of the event’s question and answer session, Trump was asked to name a “specific piece of legislation” he would champion as president “to make child care more affordable” and he proceeded to ramble for nearly 2 minutes.

[...]

In a September 4 column published in The New Republic, Parker Molloy pointed to sanitized mainstream news coverage just days earlier of a “rambling, insult-ladden, conspiracy-riddled wall of text” Trump had recently posted on his social media site:

[This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.]

Donald Trump’s incoherent responses to policies must be a major focus of election coverage, and too many outlets fell for the “sanewashing” (termed by Parker Molloy) of Trump’s incoherentness.

[bagelboys-withcreamcheese]

I’m actually the only person who understands that character sorry. other people say they do but they are. liars

[thatstormygeek]

“The New York Times did not quote any transgender people in a majority of their articles about anti-trans legislation in the past year,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, President & CEO of GLAAD, in a statement posted to GLAAD’s website. “One of the first recommendations we make during the hundreds of LGBTQ education briefings we hold with national and local newsrooms is to include LGBTQ voices in LGBTQ stories: interview the people impacted by your coverage and include their perspectives. The New York Times failed that basic reporting lesson 101, and replaced it with a pattern of obfuscating sources’ anti-trans affiliations and allowing their misinformation to go unchecked. Our coalition of more than 150 organizations, community leaders, and notable LGBTQ people and allies remains steadfast in our calls for the Times to improve their coverage of transgender people.” “The paper of record has an obligation to present its readers with the full human toll of the anti-trans legislative assault,” added Ari Drennen, LGBTQ Program Director at Media Matters. “Trans people are more than theoretical curiosities to be debated from afar. Each and every anti-trans bill affects living, breathing people whose voices deserve to be heard and whose stories deserve to be told.”

[macwantspeace]

Flames. Relentless flames. by Parker Molloy >Four years ago, in an article for Media Matters for America, I warned that journalists were sanitizing Donald Trump’s incoherent ramblings to make them more palatable for the average voter. The general practice went like this: The press would take something Trump said or did—for instance, using a visit to the Centers for Disease Control to ask about Fox News’s ratings, insult then–Washington Governor Jay Inslee, rant about his attempt to extort Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, and downplay the rising number of Covid-19 cases in the U.S.—and write them up as The New York Times did: “Trump Says ‘People Have to Remain Calm’ Amid Coronavirus Outbreak.” This had the effect of making it seem like Trump’s words and actions seemed cogent and sensible for the vast majority of Americans who didn’t happen to watch his rant live. [just holding the match to the kindling, but there's more.] >This “sanewashing” of Trump’s statements isn’t just poor journalism; it’s a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy. By continually reframing Trump’s incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former—and potentially future—president.

The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering Trump’s words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality. When major news outlets consistently present a polished version of Trump’s statements, they create an alternate narrative that exists alongside the unfiltered truth available on social media and in unedited footage. [pouring on some gasoline] >McCreesh (NYT) didn’t stop there. He went on to liken Trump to literary giants James Joyce and William Faulkner, and even psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

“In a world of canned political speeches, Mr. Trump’s style is beloved by his supporters, who enjoy these frequent glimpses into his id.”

This analysis goes beyond mere sanitization; it ventures into the realm of the absurd. By framing Trump’s incoherent ramblings as some form of avant-garde oratory, the Times isn’t just failing to accurately report—it’s actively warping reality to its readers.

The consequences of this extend beyond misleading headlines or sanitized quotes. It’s creating a dangerous disconnect between reality and reported news, fostering an environment where extreme rhetoric becomes normalized and conspiracy theories gain unwarranted legitimacy. ~~~~~ Today's word is Primary Sources. Primary means the folks who have the actual info on tape and provide that. Those guys lurking in the shadows writing clickbait headlines aren't even secondary.

[mariacallous]

Since the conversation, if you can call it that, about trans people always seems to come down to bathrooms, I am sure of one thing.

I would much rather share a ladies’ room or a locker room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace.

McBride, of course, was just elected to Congress and, in January, will be the highest-ranking elected official in America who is transgender. The 34-year-old comes to the US House of Representatives after serving in the Delaware legislature; before that, she was the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.

Mace, a member of Congress from South Carolina since 2021, has been on an ugly campaign in recent weeks clearly intended to belittle and marginalize McBride – and to get on TV as much as possible doing so. She has filed a resolution, and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given it his nod of approval, that would somehow force trans people to keep out of the congressional bathrooms that reflect their gender identity.

“If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you’ve been fooled,” wrote Natalie Johnson, Mace’s former communications director. She added, pointedly, that a real effort to protect women would involve “a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again”. (Trump, as you know, tapped the far-right former Florida representative as his attorney general as part of this month’s parade of appalling cabinet choices. Gaetz later withdrew from consideration.)

On Wednesday, McBride reacted with dignity to all the performative insults and abuse. She simply responded that she would follow the rules and that she’s in Congress to represent her Delaware district; I’m sure she’ll eventually find ways to continue her admirable advocacy.

Mace, on the other hand, can’t be described as dignified. She’s running around pasting the word “biological” on restroom doors for photo ops, and snidely tweeting in McBride’s direction about International Men’s Day.

And she’s getting plenty of the media attention she craves.

On one level, this is all part of the unending circus of the Trump era.

On a human level, it’s scary, wrong and damaging.

“As a trans person myself, I’m really worried about where this is headed,” wrote Parker Molloy, who writes incisively about politics and media in her newsletter the Present Age. “I spend each day worrying about whether or not the healthcare that keeps me alive will remain legal, whether I’m going to face new restrictions on where I’m allowed to exist in public, what would happen to me if (god forbid) I wound up in prison for some reason, and whether or not my identity documents like my passport will be retroactively made invalid.”

She added poignantly: “Now, more than ever, I feel alone.”

Trans students may have it even worse. Again, it often comes down to bathrooms.

A lot of children, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming children, avoid bathrooms all day, since that’s where the bullying can be most intense. Thus, advocates say, trans kids often are prone to urinary tract infections or eating disorders because they’ve avoided eating and drinking.

As for the right’s obsession with trans students on sports team, the vast majority have no unfair advantage on the playing fields (or courts, or pools). They are just trying to reap the same benefits of sports as do other kids – leadership, teamwork and friendship.

The meanspirited and misinformed narrative about transgender people makes it difficult for them to feel cared about and to live full lives.

But don’t try to tell that to Mace, whose preoccupation is not with kindness or decency, but with getting attention and winning the culture wars.

As the Daily Beast reported last year, Mace’s staffers were given a handbook that outlined just how intensely this mattered to their boss; they were told to book her on TV multiple times a day, amounting to nine times a week for national outlets and six times a week for local outlets.

In 2021, Mace depicted herself as supportive of LGBTQ+ rights. That was before the tide turned so forcefully and, as Philip Bump of the Washington Post put it, before “the Republican base had been fed a steady diet of anti-trans rhetoric, making trans issues fertile ground for anyone willing to engage in the fight”.

Mace, clearly, is more than willing.

If that means being cruel, then so be it. As writer Adam Serwer observed about Trumpian politics: “The cruelty is the point.”

Meanwhile, vulnerable and marginalized people are made to suffer for trying to be true to themselves. And despite the progress shown by McBride’s election, the world around this milestone seems to be getting increasingly harsh.

[comeonamericawakeup]

As an "unhinged" Donald Trump vies for a second White House term, the press is failing America, said Parker Molloy in The New Republic. Faced with an "incoherent" candidate who has blamed wind power for the high price of bacon and insists that Latin American countries are sending legions of "Hannibal Lecters" across the border, the media routinely engages in "sanewashing" - laundering Trump's insane rants to make him sound far more coherent than he actually is. They're failing to adequately convey the threat of a candidate who's vowing to wage a "bloody" campaign to deport millions of illegal migrants and impose "long-term prison sentences" on Democratic lawyers and election officials who work to ensure voting integrity. As Trump veers further off the rails, the "dangerous disconnect" between what this demagogue says and what's reported is widening. "It isn't just poor journalism; it's a form of misinformation that poses a threat to democracy."

THE WEEK September 20, 2024

The media is failing us.