Key detail in this @NYMag story on the pro-censorship movement inside NYT by its own employees: NYT tech reporters were angry that the anti-censorship posture of NYT editors would impede their campaign to pressure Silicon Valley to censor more robustly:
The role that mainstream **journalists** have played, of all people, in taking the lead to demand that Silicon Valley oligarchs more aggressively control and censor the internet -- the greatest threat to a free and open internet after mass surveillance -- cannot be overstated.
Just ponder the warped mentality of someone who chooses journalism as a career, then devotes themselves to trying to silence the ability of others to be heard by converting themselves into petulant tattletales who demand that Facebook, Twitter & Google censor dissenting voices.
This is absolutely the key fact to understand about media trends over the last 4 years: most corporate & "independent" outlets explicitly aligned themselves with one political faction -- out of both conviction and profit -- and it contaminated everything, principally the "news."
The stat that tells it all: NYT is now every bit as partisan and ideologically insular as Fox and MSNBC, talking only to hard-core Democrats, with CNN and NPR very close behind, leaving these institutions financially dependent on never reporting things that anger their audience:
Isn't this the exact generational divide over censorship and related issues at the NYT and other papers that @bariweiss infamously noted, for which she was roundly accused of lying by her former colleagues? Now, they're the ones anonymously telling the NY Mag that this is true:
Note how these post-2016 efforts to diversify the NYT newsroom when they realized they were completely out of touch have no mention of class. Were these new reporters also from wealthy & professional backgrounds with Ivy League or similar pedigrees? Is NYT now more in touch??
A key fact about the national media, which efforts at maximizing diversity -- at least the ones with which I'm familiar -- are not geared toward rectifying. Until it is, the "out-of-touch" problem will never be improved:
"It is difficult to think of many businesses that have benefited more from Donald Trump’s presidency — aside from the Trump-family empire — than the Times."
Huh - you don't say? Too bad none of them were brave enough to speak up when she was being hung out to dry for saying what everyone knows is true: huge number of newsroom employees abuse HR and union processes to try to censor & control journalism. They say it explicitly:
Anyway, definitely read the NY Mag article. Wittingly or otherwise, it reveals the internal fights plaguing not just most newsrooms like the NYT but political groups all over the country about what can and cannot be said, for what reasons and by whom:
I find it so interesting when long-obvious truths suddenly are acknowledged in mainstream circles.
Here, in the WPost, even @TaylorLorenz (!!) admits that the hordes of #Resistance freaks and anti-Trump obsessives are as conspiratorial and deranged as what they claim QAnon is:
Here's @SohrabAhmari in the @NewStatesman on how many prominent liberals -- not anonymous Twitter trolls but major DNC donors and academics -- are deranged and drowning in moronic conspiracy theories.
@SohrabAhmari @NewStatesman Just by the way: a non-trivial sector of the Brazilian left still believes the 2018 stabbing attack on Jair Bolsonaro was fake -- despite doctor testimony, his multiple surgeries, etc. -- and now believes the same about the attack on Trump.🇧🇷
Also: US corporate media always tries to deny "journalist" status to anyone who actually does real adversarial reporting against the US Govt, rather than just doing a Natasha Bertrand of writing down what CIA orders.
Assange won multiple journalism awards around the world:👇
I urge everyone to watch the repulsive exchange between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani at the 2008 GOP debate Dave mentioned.
It shows how blind and repressive the Bush-Cheney-era GOP - and US - were, and still are, to core truths about our foreign policy:
That military aggression by the US and allies (Israel) will produce "blowback" -- meaning the people we bomb will hate us and want to kill us in return -- was created by the CIA!
Yet it's so taboo that TikTok was forced to censor the bin Laden letter because it discuss this.
To prosecute Hunter Biden, FBI has to say -- and has testified -- that his laptop and every document on it is authentic and unaltered.
Not one media outlet who spread the CIA's bullshit "Russian disinformation" lie has retracted it or apologized:
One more time: the people who most loudly and continuously claim that they are combatting "disinformation" are the exact people who spread it most aggressively and easily. Just look:
For weeks before the 2020 election, corporate media and CIA united to fabricate this complete lie to shield Joe Biden from incriminating reporting about his family's business activities in China and Ukraine.
This exchange alone proves what a pathological liar Fauci is.
One week after receiving emails from top epidemiologists arguing the virus was likely a lab leak, Fauci caused a virtual ban on questioning COVID's origin.
But he's a liberal folk hero so only GOP can raise this:
Before anything was known about COVID's origins, Fauci engineered a fake consensus that it was naturally occurring: in part because he had connections to the Wuhan lab.
People were banned online from questioning or debating it, until even Biden Admin admitted they don't know:👇
And just to show how cynically liberals weaponize racism:
It was decreed that "lab leak theory" was racist even though the more racist theory was theirs: that the Chinese are so unsanitary that filthy wet markets caused it.
The only thing that should have mattered was truth.