Thread by @perksentangled

The conservative trope about vaccine procurement at the federal level somehow contributing to the third wave is also a media literacy opportunity 💡

A thread 🧵

A major difference between a regular newsroom and a corporate public relations mouthpiece like Rebel News or Post Media is the way a news item is constructed.

Normally, you gather news to write a story. From a PR perspective though, you have a story and need to generate support.

A typical "blame Trudeau" piece like this is the soup du jour every day on the right. The need to identify support for the narrative has become so commonplace that every opportunity will have someone looking for an angle to elevate it, thus creating a marketplace of theories.

In a normal journalism equation, these would be leads to the story... but here, in place of journalists, in conservative media we have what are essentially brokers of information, loosely referred to as "columnists" 🤷🏻‍♂️

This is why some people understand the massive conflict of information between Ford Nation and Brian Lilley via his personal relationship with a staffer. He's barely a journalist. He's a lobbyist to the people.

But it's also why some people will just grab a story that seems plausible because the timeline checks out and this guy is in a daily newspaper on the front page so he must know what he's talking about. It doesn't have to convince them, just make them doubt the narrative 🔥💰

The moral of the story is: shout down disinformation by elevating the truth. They spend big money to get their disinformation out there, so its only professional for a broker like Robyn Urback to give it a column to earn her salary. It's false and won't be supported by time 🧠💀

Ultimately, the incentive for disinformation comes through the commodification of news. So long as our information can be persuaded by quarterly profits, then we will be persuaded by theories that can be leveraged for short-term gains in wealth and power.

In conclusion, they're just doing their job. All labour is important. Don't hate the player, hate the game 💰

🎶 "Don't tell me how the universe is altered... when you find out how (s)he gets paid, alright" 🎶