Sinclair's "local news" here in Seattle (KOMO) is laser-focused on pouring salt and lemon juice in the wound of the city's very real homeless problem via propaganda:
then there's this old Deadspin video that raised more awareness of the problem with Sinclair's homogenized, misleading "local news" gibberish than any long-form journalism I've seen in the last 20 years
the savvy pundit take on here is that propaganda like this doesn't matter or its impact is somehow overstated. but if you talk to academics who study media, they'll most assuredly inform you it not only matters, it can even shift elections:
when local news died off in the United States, all kinds of terrible monsters quickly filled the vacuum, and sinclair is only one small part of the problem:
I'm still struck by a lack of any meaningful creative solutions for the U.S. propaganda problem. Twitter's filled with legal experts who'll helpfully and correctly inform you what's not allowed under the law and Constitution, but they too offer no meaningful solutions
anyway, remember when Sinclair tried to grow even larger by acquiring Tribune, but lied SO much that it forced even the Trump FCC to take a stand?
After the agency spent a year gutting media consolidation rules to grease the acquisition wheels?
the mainstream press is either so inconceivably stupid they still don't know they're being exploited to spread right wing propaganda, or they know and don't care because the controversy is profitable under a broken ad-based journalism model
both are bad
"critical race theory" is a completely fabricated piece of right wing propaganda designed to prey on inherent racism to agitate low information voters, and it's gobsmacking the press still hasn't figured out their role in amplifying it
CRT hysteria was a propaganda op crafted by a right winger who lives like an hour west of me
this has been amply documented for the last two years yet the press STILL amplifies it as a valid policy concern/concept and not the manufactured, contemptuous dogshit that it is
TIL there's a segment of health and science reporters who apparently think long covid is a made up thing
probably news to somebody like @GenePark who is going through hell after a mild infection
@GenePark#lymedisease patients whose symptoms didn't fully resolve after 14 days of doxycycline (technically dubbed "post treatment lyme disease syndrome") went through the exact same cocksure bullshit from the peanut gallery, and I hope this ignorance isn't pervasive with long covid
the idea that an infection can damage the body in lasting and poorly understood ways should not be a controversial concept. and yet for a weird sect of cocksure peanut gallery observers, it somehow is
I like the part where she subtly suggests Louis CK shouldn't have faced meaningful accountability for consistently showing uninterested people his genitals
"I just want to be able to say racist things or ridicule trans people without facing even modest accountability online" dressed up as some elaborate intellectual argument and it's just so exceptionally boring
everything about the modern GOP is performative victimization porn. OAN is chock full of harmful conspiratorial gibberish and is widely criticized because it's dogshit
OAN wasn't even profitable dogshit. Cable and news executives would air any inflammatory garbage they could find and get away with if it made money, but OAN saw like 14k daily viewers on a good day
the /realtesla subreddit is full of people suddenly forced to pay $17,000 because their battery failed, or sharing photos like this one of the shit build quality for purported luxury automobiles
oh look, 14 months after Biden took office (a 9 month inexplicable Democratic appointment delay followed by 5 months of Republican obstructionism dressed up as policy) the FCC gets closer to having a functional FCC that can actually do things
figure several more months before she gets seated, then assuming the broader agency has the political backbone to do things like restore #netneutrality like they promised (which I'm still not 100% sure of), you enter the schlog of FCC procedure, which will take even longer
they really should have prioritized the appointment of Sohn with the same gusto they pursued Lina Khan, but because telecom policy has fallen out of favor under the myopic obsession with "big tech" you get this glacial shitshow