#media narrative

[muffinlevelchicanery]

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

[beta-lactam-allergic]

I watched the ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Commission, to avoid confusion with other news agencies with same abbreviation) coverage of the opening of the Ram Mandir tonight (22nd January 2024).

The ABC coverage did not once mention that Ram Mandir is built on the site Hindus believe to be the birthplace of Rama. That this site is one of the most sacred sites in Hinduism.

If I had not followed this story over several years through other sources & just got my insight from that one news story, I would be under the impression that rabid Hindus destroyed a mosque for no reason & built a Hindu Temple on top of the mosque site for no reason other than to hate on Muslims. People who watch that story with no prior knowledge will be under the impression that the Babri Masjid mosque was built on a completely greenfield site. They would have no idea that it was built on the site of a pre-existing Temple to Rama. That the Mughal Empire destroyed an actively used Temple for the religion that their native subjects practiced, so as to put a structure of their own introduced faith on top of that site.

The way the ABC framed that story wasn't balanced. They could have mentioned the sites sacredness to Hinduism whilst still talking about the riots that killed thousands started by Hindus. Neither Hindus nor Muslims were saints in this, nor were either wholly bad, but you wouldn't know that from the way the story was framed.

[trendynewsnow]

The Central Role of Black Men in the Presidential Campaign: A Discussion on Agency and Media Narratives

The Central Role of Black Men in the Presidential Campaign As the presidential campaign approaches its culmination, Black men have once again become a focal point of national discourse. Their political inclinations are under intense examination, with political consultants, pollsters, and media analysts debating whether their shifting allegiance away from the Democratic Party could jeopardize…

[circleandsquarecomic]

Circle is Consistent

[girl-with-bones]

hi hello i am a different person you have never met. also I vaguely dislike you for some reason

huh wow that's a really mean thing to say. Why would you do that. I'm sure this will net me zero internet points for having a funny response and/or displaying an inflammatory statement that gets people to interact.

Thanks, different random person. What a funny and/or shocking spontaneous interaction we're having.

[calicojack1718]

Election 2024: The Motivations of the Press and Democrats Behind the Biden So Old Drama

The Biden so old thing seems like its never going away and is in danger of becoming the James Comey moment of the election. Why won't the press and Democrats drop it when it can only help Trump, literally, destroy the world?

SUMMARY: The Biden so Old election controversy features intriguing motivations of the participants in this unprecedented political situation. Unpacking the motivations behind this clash and the media drama that ensued, this post offers a comprehensive analysis of the reason the FOR PROFIT political media have been writing multiple daily stories about it, and the Democrats who feel compelled to…

[drdamiang]

MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE

MAINSTREAM NARRATIVE

(for the students)

the great locomotive

steamed out of the station

built up

momentum

determined to cross

from

ocean to

ocean

but

ran out of track

and crashed

unable to

hold up that weight

on its cardboard wheels

[theboyonthehighcastle]

Yup, that's the current state of journalism today.

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

[composeregg]

edit (10/23/2024) now that the poll is over: Original version, with 10 questions, from April 2023 here

And, given that the original is from April 2023, that means I can very easily say:

No, this was not an ISAT reference!

Just because I use parentheses and 2nd person pov and love the same concepts of what a time loop can do to a person doesn't mean it's ISAT

(Yes, I like ISAT, the original poll is why I was recommended the game! But if you look at the original, you can see all the origins of the options to choose from, including what spurred me on with the moss option from the replies)

If I were going to make something for ISAT, I would never be so vague, you can simply look at my ao3 for proof of that

[anniekoh]

on how the media covers “crime”

Assembling a Crime Wave Alec Karakatsanis (May 2023)

how focused many professional class elites are, at any given moment, on their belief that there is some sort of “crime wave” happening.   Professional elites are routinely in a state of panic about crime.  (By this I mean a narrow range of crimes for which police arrest mostly poor people.)

Professional elites rarely experience a moral panic or subjective feeling of a “crime wave” or “surge” about crimes like wage theft, water pollution, foreclosure fraud, tax evasion, air pollution, building safety code violations, prison guard brutality, illegal police spying, political corruption, sexual assault of migrant detainees, or other crimes that are rampant and cause objectively higher levels of harm.   They seem only to obsess urgently about some crimes committed by some people, and this obsession is usually not correlated with any objective assessment of overall threat to well-being.  I have written about how the criminal punishment bureaucracy largely ignores the crimes of powerful people while ruthlessly and selectively targeting poor and marginalized people, and I have written many times in this newsletter with a wide range of examples about how media coverage of crime distorts what we see as urgent. 

Citations Needed podcast: Local Crime Reporting as Racist Police Stenography (2019 I think)

"The suspect fled on foot, police said. Call this number if you have any information." "The incident took place at the 1200 block of Grove." "Police say." "Police sources are telling us." "Suspect is thought to be armed and dangerous."

We’ve all heard this type of Official Copspeak before. The local press dutifully informs us about "suspects" and "gang members" and "burglars." They're infiltrating our neighborhoods, rampaging through our streets, climbing in our windows. The police, of course, are just doing their part to keep us safe. Local media and community-based message boards they pander to read like police blotters. "Dial 1-800-985-TIPS for your friendly neighborhood detective!"

But what if publishing police department press releases isn't really journalism, but rather free public relations for an already extremely powerful, routinely violent, often corrupt and deeply conflicted institution? What if the genre of so-called “crime’ reporting is inherently reactionary and the whole enterprise of how we think about “crime” needs to be deconstructed and reconsidered?

On this week’s episode, we discuss why local "crime" reporting widely suffers from racist tabloidism and what overworked and under-resourced journalists can do to gather information from sources that don't wear badges.

We are joined by Chicago-based activists Sharlyn Grace and Malcolm London.

[serial-unaliver]

call me insane I mean neurodivergent but it's possible to engage in weaponized incompetence while neurodivergent. like, I don't think 90% of the internet knows what weaponized incompetence means. it isn't simply struggling to complete tasks, it's malicious compliance. malicious compliance is a strategy for punishment of and control of another person. it can be done justifiably, like in response to an employer demanding you complete a dangerous task, but a situation like "husband thinks he shouldn't give a fuck about his children because that's for women" is a bit different, no?

like it's genuinely concerning to me to see weaponized incompetence misinterpreted to defend it because it's still incredibly normalized--how many wives joke about how it's just a guy thing to not be able to do laundry or not know basic facts about your child to tell a doctor? weaponized incompetence is already portrayed as some sort of inherent trait instead of learned behavior, so to see people say "what if it's adhd" (I forgot you think adhd and autism are ALSO only something men deal with and the wife has zero issues, sorry /s) actually drives me insane

[finisnihil]

“They finally made this theme more blatant-" Why does it need to be blatant. What's wrong with subtlety? Concepts can be underused but subtlety is not neglect.

Blaring all your concepts and themes is not good writing. It's so disruptive to a story's flow when the characters look off the screen to be like "See? This is the concept. The idea. The theme."

If you can feel the hand of the author becoming too heavy that's bad.

For example: I see people saying Azula's abuse in ATLA is more blatant in the live action and it's good because "it's being discussed more". It already was discussed at length. The show made it clear she was a victim at every turn, every behavior, every reaction, it came from a place of trauma. It was made clear that she was scared of ending up like Zuko because Zuko was an example of what would happen to her if she failed. When she says she's better than Zuko it wasn't just because she was raised to think hersef superior to him but because Zuko failed and failures get mutilated and exiled, failures are abandoned. In that final Agni Kai the music is morose and somber because this isnt some epic battle its a fucking tragedy, the burning out of "Ozai's brightest light" and Azula finally succumbing to her terror and trauma she was repressing now that her worst fears are realized. How can you see a fourteen year old girl chained to a sewer grate wailing and writhing and breathing fire desperately as unsympathetic? Even Katara and Zuko are horrified as to what has become of her.

The writers weren't looking us in the eye and saying "See? She's a victim too" when they wrote this, they weaved it in. They weaved it into her obsesison with symmetry, her extreme perfectionism, the way she talks about Ozai, the ways she calls herself a monster, her isolation from those with healthy home lives, all the ways she held herself together and ultimately all the cracks and seams that she shattered down when she fell apart. It did not need to be blatant to be clear.

[hypertechnica]

happy 9th undertale anniversary, everyone. :)

[redvelvetwishtree]