Apparently this woman is a scientist who blew the whistle on the Florida state government lying about COVID cases. Looks like DeSantis sent in the police to try to stop her from reporting data, and the cops in the photo drew guns when they realized her children were upstairs. They stole her computer and phone, which she had been using to report data that the government found inconvenient.
Sending in the police to break into the homes of the government's enemies, point guns at your children, and steal your property qualifies as genuine, unashamed fascism.
I've seen some polls about the Georgia run-offs, but I'm not putting any stock in them. We know it's gonna be close. And that is a very sad state of affairs, because one of the candidates (Perdue) literally SKIPPED the debate because he was too chicken to show up, and the other (Loeffler) wouldn't say whether she accepted the results of the Presidential election. And both races are basically a coin-flip. Pathetic. They're basically running on a platform of being craven power-mongers who are syncophants to a President who would prefer to end democracy in America if he could get away with it.
F***ing useless Republicans. Can't pass aid to Americans if their lives depended on it. Things like this are a stark reminder that the GOP deserves to become politically irrelevant, as they betray their own voters time and time and time again.
"Nearly nine-in-ten U.S. adults (88%) say the $2 trillion economic aid package passed in March was the right thing to do, including identical majorities of Republicans and Democrats (89% each). More than three-quarters (77%) think it will be necessary for the president and Congress to pass legislation providing additional economic assistance.
Majorities of Americans say the aid package enacted last month will do a great deal or a fair amount to help a range of actors, including large businesses (77%), small businesses (71%), state and local governments (67%) and unemployed people (68%)."
The repetition point really is key. I share the same concern about how you can possibly persuade so many people who believe in disinformation. There's a subset that can be reached imo. There's also a subset that simply cannot be.
It's not a mere short term repetition, such as Trump's recent assertions about the election. It's multi-decade long project that has come to fruition. Tens of millions of Americans who refuse to trust any information that comes from CNN, NYT, NPR or really any non-conservative outlet. I just don't think you can expect to combat certain levels of entrenchment.
At the end of the day, the only solution I can offer is the slow, arduous, and unpleasant work of winning elections.
Simple arrogance and nothing more. As if Democrats are in the sole position to determine what is "misinformation" and what is true, based on nothing whatsoever. By all data we have, it is both independents and Republicans who express skepticism of mainstream sources of news. Trying to handwave the majority opinion away as partisanship falls flat on its face when you look at the simple fact that distrust in media crosses ideological lines and gets solid majorities while doing so. The most common opinion of mainstream media is having "no trust at all" in it. This has been a consistent trend for over a decade.
So is the majority of the country, regardless of political affiliation, crazy? Or is it the liberal wingnuts who can't doubt an authority figure if they tried? I think the answer is self evident. They are so high on the idea of their own superiority they can't entertain the idea that they could be wrong about something.
F***ing useless Republicans. Can't pass aid to Americans if their lives depended on it. Things like this are a stark reminder that the GOP deserves to become politically irrelevant, as they betray their own voters time and time and time again.
"Nearly nine-in-ten U.S. adults (88%) say the $2 trillion economic aid package passed in March was the right thing to do, including identical majorities of Republicans and Democrats (89% each). More than three-quarters (77%) think it will be necessary for the president and Congress to pass legislation providing additional economic assistance.
Majorities of Americans say the aid package enacted last month will do a great deal or a fair amount to help a range of actors, including large businesses (77%), small businesses (71%), state and local governments (67%) and unemployed people (68%)."
The repetition point really is key. I share the same concern about how you can possibly persuade so many people who believe in disinformation. There's a subset that can be reached imo. There's also a subset that simply cannot be.
It's not a mere short term repetition, such as Trump's recent assertions about the election. It's multi-decade long project that has come to fruition. Tens of millions of Americans who refuse to trust any information that comes from CNN, NYT, NPR or really any non-conservative outlet. I just don't think you can expect to combat certain levels of entrenchment.
At the end of the day, the only solution I can offer is the slow, arduous, and unpleasant work of winning elections.
Simple arrogance and nothing more. As if Democrats are in the sole position to determine what is "misinformation" and what is true, based on nothing whatsoever. By all data we have, it is both independents and Republicans who express skepticism of mainstream sources of news. Trying to handwave the majority opinion away as partisanship falls flat on its face when you look at the simple fact that distrust in media crosses ideological lines and gets solid majorities while doing so. The most common opinion of mainstream media is having "no trust at all" in it. This has been a consistent trend for over a decade.
So is the majority of the country, regardless of political affiliation, crazy? Or is it the liberal wingnuts who can't doubt an authority figure if they tried? I think the answer is self evident. They are so high on the idea of their own superiority they can't entertain the idea that they could be wrong about something.
I always hated that poll because ‘mass media’ to vague of a term to have any use in what is now a broad news media market compared to when that poll first started in the 70s.
‘Mass media’ to a liberal might be the Sinclair network. To a Republican it might be the NYT or MNBC. To an independent it might be the garbage their friends share on Facebook or Twitter. It needs to be broken down more to specific sources, and I believe there was one that was shared here that actually showed ideological divides in trust such as Democrats not trusting Hannity and Republicans saying he is their most trusted news source. When a person’s opinion, which Hannity’s show is, becomes a trusted news source, then it becomes an problem and being unable to determine what is factual information and what is ‘misinformation.’
F***ing useless Republicans. Can't pass aid to Americans if their lives depended on it. Things like this are a stark reminder that the GOP deserves to become politically irrelevant, as they betray their own voters time and time and time again.
"Nearly nine-in-ten U.S. adults (88%) say the $2 trillion economic aid package passed in March was the right thing to do, including identical majorities of Republicans and Democrats (89% each). More than three-quarters (77%) think it will be necessary for the president and Congress to pass legislation providing additional economic assistance.
Majorities of Americans say the aid package enacted last month will do a great deal or a fair amount to help a range of actors, including large businesses (77%), small businesses (71%), state and local governments (67%) and unemployed people (68%)."
The repetition point really is key. I share the same concern about how you can possibly persuade so many people who believe in disinformation. There's a subset that can be reached imo. There's also a subset that simply cannot be.
It's not a mere short term repetition, such as Trump's recent assertions about the election. It's multi-decade long project that has come to fruition. Tens of millions of Americans who refuse to trust any information that comes from CNN, NYT, NPR or really any non-conservative outlet. I just don't think you can expect to combat certain levels of entrenchment.
At the end of the day, the only solution I can offer is the slow, arduous, and unpleasant work of winning elections.
Simple arrogance and nothing more. As if Democrats are in the sole position to determine what is "misinformation" and what is true, based on nothing whatsoever. By all data we have, it is both independents and Republicans who express skepticism of mainstream sources of news. Trying to handwave the majority opinion away as partisanship falls flat on its face when you look at the simple fact that distrust in media crosses ideological lines and gets solid majorities while doing so. The most common opinion of mainstream media is having "no trust at all" in it. This has been a consistent trend for over a decade.
So is the majority of the country, regardless of political affiliation, crazy? Or is it the liberal wingnuts who can't doubt an authority figure if they tried? I think the answer is self evident. They are so high on the idea of their own superiority they can't entertain the idea that they could be wrong about something.
I always hated that poll because ‘mass media’ to vague of a term to have any use in what is now a broad news media market compared to when that poll first started in the 70s.
‘Mass media’ to a liberal might be the Sinclair network. To a Republican it might be the NYT or MNBC. To an independent it might be the garbage their friends share on Facebook or Twitter. It needs to be broken down more to specific sources, and I believe there was one that was shared here that actually showed ideological divides in trust such as Democrats not trusting Hannity and Republicans saying he is their most trusted news source. When a person’s opinion, which Hannity’s show is, becomes a trusted news source, then it becomes an problem and being unable to determine what is factual information and what is ‘misinformation.’
I don't see a problem in the way the question is phrased, really. "In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mainstream media, such as newspapers, T.V, and radio when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly" gives off a pretty clear impression of what they mean by mainstream media, in my view. It is clearly referring to the big networks, major newspapers, and talk radio. I think most people would understand what this question means if you ask them.
Asking which sources one trusts the most has its uses, but I feel like the amount of information you can extrapolate from that is limited, at least without asking how much faith you have in your most trusted source. Do people generally believe all that they hear from their most trusted sources, or do they merely find them the most tolerable out of a set of bad choices? For example, if someone were to ask me that question, I would say my go-to sources are the New York Times and The Washington Post. My actual trust levels for those sources are practically zero, but if I had to give an answer that would be it. Knowing those are my two most trusted sources doesn't actually tell you very much about my opinions, and you could draw conclusions that are far off the mark based on that.
Asking which sources one trusts the most has its uses, but I feel like the amount of information you can extrapolate from that is limited, at least without asking how much faith you have in your most trusted source. Do people generally believe all that they hear from their most trusted sources, or do they merely find them the most tolerable out of a set of bad choices? For example, if someone were to ask me that question, I would say my go-to sources are the New York Times and The Washington Post. My actual trust levels for those sources are practically zero, but if I had to give an answer that would be it. Knowing those are my two most trusted sources doesn't actually tell you very much about my opinions, and you could draw conclusions that are far off the mark based on that.
I can answer my own concern. The majority of people do, indeed, see bias even in their own sources of news, and more than 80% see at least a moderate amount of bias in news coverage generally. More than 80% of people, correctly, also blame the media for the political divisions and polarization in the country. It's also worth noting that younger people are much more skeptical of mainstream news than older folks.
"Americans perceive less bias in their top news source than in the media more generally, yet a majority recognize bias in their go-to news source. Over half of Americans see “a great deal” (21%) or “a fair amount” (36%) of bias in the news source they rely on most. Perceptions of bias in one’s own media sources are roughly similar across the political spectrum of outlets. Americans who rely on Fox News (53%) have a similar viewpoint as those who use CNN (58%) in saying their trusted source has a great deal or a fair amount of bias, though Fox News users are more likely than CNN viewers to say their source has a great deal of bias (23% vs. 16%). "
The premise in all of these "Do you trust the media" stuff is and always will be weak. First - Bias exists in literally everything. Even people who champion science usually misunderstand that bias worms its way into scientific data. So recognizing "some bias" in anything is just about as useful as saying "I feel temperature". Of course you do. You cant not feel temperature, if you can feel at all.
Second - The questions are generally non specific enough to be useful, as @deltago alluded - different media to different people are the problem, and its hard to use a poll looking at the issue from 20,000 feet to address the issue.
Third - There's a fundamental unpinning flaw in any argument about media trustworthiness in that it has become a pillar of conservative orthodoxy to disrespect and treat the media as an antagonist. News media is inherently biased (as all things are, see beginning) and is also biased so that it will be more readily consumed by the people of the political persuasion it appeals to. In a neutral environment, you would expect news media to reach out to each camp and offer each side what it wants: a news perspective with their political bias. The system is fundamentally upset because conservative orthodoxy doesnt just want its own news media (which they watch so much that it is the most watched mainstream news source in the USA) - they view all other news sources as the enemy.
An example of that dichotomy: Conservatives consider NYT and WaPo to be the enemy, despite having very strong and well respected/credentialed editorial boards that ensure they're less biased than many news sources out there. The WST is a conservative outlet with similarly strong editorial boards, and while plenty of Progressives vehemently disagree with their policy outlook - they arent viewed as inherently evil/awful for simply being a news source that doesnt conform to their views.
There is also the difference between "getting something wrong" (which more traditional media of course does) and "making shit up and lying on purpose", which is conservative media's modus operandi. Again, no one thinks the consumers of this content are bigger rubes than the people peddling it. They are simply very good at fluffing the emotions of people they have complete contempt for. You don't knowingly lie to people you respect.
A good analysis from the well respected Economic Policy Institute, which has been cited by everyone from Clinton and Sanders to Trump, about how Trump failed to live up to his trade and manufacturing promises and why it is important to make it a national mission to do so. Manufacturing is one of those industries where someone with little education or prospects, but who is willing to work hard, can make a good living for themselves. Such opportunities are shrinking more and more in this country, as we destroy our own industrial base and give away our technology industries and several others to other countries. Class warfare against the skilled and the unskilled laborer. What is left for the American worker? Very little.
An example of that dichotomy: Conservatives consider NYT and WaPo to be the enemy, despite having very strong and well respected/credentialed editorial boards that ensure they're less biased than many news sources out there.
My eyes rolled so far into my head I nearly broke my optical nerve. These two outlets are still spouting unhinged conspiracy theories about Russia well after any possible justification for such claims has long since died. Nobody really believes that they do anything less than take the party line political position on everything. I read enough of these two in particular to know a manifest falsehood when I see it. You would be hard pressed to find a single article that does not get coated, at some point, with opinion and ideology.
Of course, they are far from the only ones, but they are also far from the gold standard of objective political coverage.
An example of that dichotomy: Conservatives consider NYT and WaPo to be the enemy, despite having very strong and well respected/credentialed editorial boards that ensure they're less biased than many news sources out there. The WST is a conservative outlet with similarly strong editorial boards, and while plenty of Progressives vehemently disagree with their policy outlook - they arent viewed as inherently evil/awful for simply being a news source that doesnt conform to their views.
This is a key point imo. Newsrooms (not counting opinion here) recognize that their reporters have biases. And newsrooms are structured in such a way and try to train their reporters to compensate for these biases. I'm not saying that they do this perfectly. But the idea that the ostensibly play-it-straight outlets like the NYT, the WaPo and even the WSJ are either failing to recognize that they can be biased at all or simply don't care and are happy to report in a biased fashion is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how these newsrooms work.
And your comparison with science is apt. Even physicists and chemists working in laboratory conditions understand that bias can emerge in a study and thus take extreme and labor intensive measures to combat that. There's no such thing as even a perfect lab experiment. And veteran members of a newsroom recognize this reality in their work as well, and are doing the same.
Lastly, tailoring your coverage to always land between the parties isn't unbiased. That is also a bias. It is not the case that the midpoint between Republicans and Democrats on every issue is the objective truth. And unfortunately we live in a time where one party chooses to stake out factually wrong positions on a number of important issues. For one obvious example, the news media cannot treat both parties equally on the issue of climate change and also be objective.
An example of that dichotomy: Conservatives consider NYT and WaPo to be the enemy, despite having very strong and well respected/credentialed editorial boards that ensure they're less biased than many news sources out there. The WST is a conservative outlet with similarly strong editorial boards, and while plenty of Progressives vehemently disagree with their policy outlook - they arent viewed as inherently evil/awful for simply being a news source that doesnt conform to their views.
This is a key point imo. Newsrooms (not counting opinion here) recognize that their reporters have biases. And newsrooms are structured in such a way and try to train their reporters to compensate for these biases. I'm not saying that they do this perfectly. But the idea that the ostensibly play-it-straight outlets like the NYT, the WaPo and even the WSJ are either failing to recognize that they can be biased at all or simply don't care and are happy to report in a biased fashion is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how these newsrooms work.
And your comparison with science is apt. Even physicists and chemists working in laboratory conditions understand that bias can emerge in a study and thus take extreme and labor intensive measures to combat that. There's no such thing as even a perfect lab experiment. And veteran members of a newsroom recognize this reality in their work as well, and are doing the same.
Lastly, tailoring your coverage to always land between the parties isn't unbiased. That is also a bias. It is not the case that the midpoint between Republicans and Democrats on every issue is the objective truth. And unfortunately we live in a time where one party chooses to stake out factually wrong positions on a number of important issues. For one obvious example, the news media cannot treat both parties equally on the issue of climate change and also be objective.
That would assume the media covers climate change AT ALL, which they don't. Not in any meaningful way. And this is part of the reason why. Because they have to "both sides" everything, they'd rather just leave it alone rather than make Republicans angry.
... You do know Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, right? I mean - You're railing on Journalists by citing journalists. I suppose he's a good one, because he believes what you believe?
(Not only a journalist, but someone with... let's say - eccentricities).
There is also the difference between "getting something wrong" (which more traditional media of course does) and "making shit up and lying on purpose", which is conservative media's modus operandi. Again, no one thinks the consumers of this content are bigger rubes than the people peddling it. They are simply very good at fluffing the emotions of people they have complete contempt for. You don't knowingly lie to people you respect.
I’ll also add, and have done this countless times in the past, I would really like to see an ‘untrusted’ news article from a mainstream media outlet and why what is written in it is ‘untrustworthy.’
Right now, it’s like screaming ‘Russian Hoax’ even though the Senate has found connections, and the Mueller report also found connections, just not enough to rise to the level to press charges. Regardless of how many times this is repeated, people will still use the phrase ‘Russian Hoax’ when talking about any news coverage of it, since that is what Trump and his cohorts screamed for 3 1/2 years until everyone on the right thought it was true.
... You do know Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, right? I mean - You're railing on Journalists by citing journalists. I suppose he's a good one, because he believes what you believe?
(Not only a journalist, but someone with... let's say - eccentricities).
Also worth noting that Greenwald has soft-pedaled some of corruption allegations against Lula in Brazil and more especially the proven widespread corruption against members of Lula's PT party.
And, I'm not even saying he was wrong to do so. The prosecution against Lula was farcical and immoral, and the conservative coalition of parties have been guilty of far worse corruption. So there's a perfectly justifiable reason to bend one's coverage that way.
But... that's exactly what Kasie Hunt is doing in remarking on Biden's honesty. I don't think she's saying Biden is always honest. Merely that, by comparison, he is much more honest. As Greenwald's former employer said of him, he believes he's the only honest journalist out there. But he's just as guilty of what he decries.
... You do know Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, right? I mean - You're railing on Journalists by citing journalists. I suppose he's a good one, because he believes what you believe?
(Not only a journalist, but someone with... let's say - eccentricities).
Also worth noting that Greenwald has soft-pedaled some of corruption allegations against Lula in Brazil and more especially the proven widespread corruption against members of Lula's PT party.
And, I'm not even saying he was wrong to do so. The prosecution against Lula was farcical and immoral, and the conservative coalition of parties have been guilty of far worse corruption. So there's a perfectly justifiable reason to bend one's coverage that way.
But... that's exactly what Kasie Hunt is doing in remarking on Biden's honesty. I don't think she's saying Biden is always honest. Merely that, by comparison, he is much more honest. As Greenwald's former employer said of him, he believes he's the only honest journalist out there. But he's just as guilty of what he decries.
Glenn Greenwald's only north star at this point is his own narcissism. And he is among a group of about a dozen people who have decided it's a good career move to pick contrarian fights with centrist Dems on Twitter, almost exclusively. They aren't wrong about the career move part. I've actuall gotten into it with him on a couple of occasions on Twitter in which he responded over the years, and he is not a pleasant person. He craves the arguments he sparks.
It's telling when people complain about "bias" in the media and then laud folks like Greenwald. I don't want to take away from his accomplishments, but the man has never written about a subject without also taking a hard line position on it. The man has hard line positions on everything from EU politics, to Brazil, to Israel, to Bolivia and more. Despite how he styles himself, he's a completely partisan journalist. Failing to toe the line for the US Democratic Party doesn't exempt him from being a partisan journalist. Hell, he's literally married to a Brazilian congressman -- meaning he stands to directly benefit from Bolsonaro's coalition losing future elections. A benefit far more direct than what most mainstream journalists accused of liberal bias stand to gain.
And, afaik, The Intercept never disclosed this fact in the major Brazil stories he co-authored -- which is an elementary piece of transparency most newsrooms would do.
The love of Greenwald by folks who decry bias in the mainstream news isn't unique. It's the same for Fox News fans and now we're seeing a growth among even less scrupulous outlets like Newsmax. It rings super false to decry bias in the media and then promote outlets or individuals who are even more biased.
This is why you shouldn't rush an agreement for political purposes. This complaint won't get much traction, and I doubt Biden will throw a tantrum about it when the US loses and just chalk it up to 'poor negotiation skills of the previous administration.' Another article (which I can't find the non msn link to) has a former dispute settlement lawyer weigh into it:
“Of course, U.S. dairy farmers had high hopes,” said Nicolas Lamp, a former dispute settlement lawyer at the World Trade Organization who now teaches trade law at Queen’s University.
The excitement ended abruptly in June, however, when the Canadian government announced exactly how it planned to roll out that extra market access for U.S. imports.
Canada’s decision to give much of the new quota to domestic dairy processors through import permits riled U.S. politicians and U.S. dairy industry groups. The concern for U.S. producers, Lamp said, is that Canadian processors are more likely to import lower-value milk products and turn them into higher-value, retail-ready products, rather than just import the high-value products.
“The economic value of the quota for the U.S. depends on the decisions that Canadian importers are making,” Lamp said.
The U.S. Dairy Export Council described Canada’s quota allocation plan as a show of “disregard for its USMCA dairy commitments.” Jaime Castaneda, the council’s senior vice-president of trade policy, said in a statement that Canada was “implementing its dairy tariff rate quota system in a manner designed to discourage full use of U.S. market access rights.”
For months, Lighthizer has been under significant bipartisan pressure from Congress to address the issue. A group of 25 senators wrote to Lighthizer in August, asking him to use to measures laid out in USMCA “to hold our trading partners accountable to their trade commitments.”
This week’s U.S. media reports suggested that Lighthizer could kickstart USMCA’s formal dispute resolution process soon. The U.S. move represents the first enforcement action under the new trade deal.
In the letter, the U.S. senators said Canada’s method of allocating the tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) has restricted U.S. industry from extracting full value from the extra volume it is now able to send into Canada.
“Canada must administer its TRQs fairly and in a manner consistent with its obligations under USMCA,” the letter reads. “It cannot be allowed to administer TRQs in a manner that discourages utilization or restricts the ability of the U.S. dairy industry to completely fill the established TRQs at advantageous price points.”
Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng’s office declined to comment on the reports of the coming action. But spokesperson Youmy Han denied allegations that Canada isn’t making good on its dairy commitments under the agreement.
“Canada’s administration of its dairy TRQs is in full compliance with its commitments under the new NAFTA,” she said in an email.
Lamp at Queen’s said the dispute over whether Canada is in compliance is “a really tricky” question.
“They may not be following the spirit of the agreement but, so far, I don’t see how they’re violating the letter of the agreement,” he said.
“The thing with a quota is you have to decide who gets the quota,” Lamp said.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who recently fired 7 whistleblowers who accused him of criminal activity, filed a motion with the Supreme Court, because apparently that's something you can do, asking the Supreme Court to block 62 Biden electors from four states because they are going to vote not for Trump but for Biden. This is yet another coup attempt.
Today, Trump joined fellow criminal Ken Paxton in the lawsuit. Critics have speculated that Paxton's lawsuit is a bid to curry favor with Trump in hopes of receiving a preemptive pardon. The FBI is investigating allegations by former senior staffers that Paxton used the attorney general’s office to benefit a campaign donor.
Lindsey Graham said today on the Mike Gallagher Show (one of the many syndicated Limbaugh clones) that he believes Stacey Abrams coordinated with elected Republicans in Georgia to deny Trump the election. It takes real work to be this disingenuous. Because it's completely realistic that Brian Kemp, who used the apparatus and power of his office as Secretary of State to accuse the Abrams campaign of baseless felonies 48 hours before the election in 2018, would then team up with her to deny a Republican President the state's electoral votes. It's more likely that Simba would allow the hyenas to be his royal guard after deposing Scar. You have to believe the brains of the people you are pushing this to are absolute mush to go public with these kind of comments.
There are now over a dozen states with Republican AGs that are filing legal challenges arguing that the results in other states be thrown out because they didn't vote for Donald Trump. There are two parties in America at this point. One believes in democracy, the other wants to abandon it entirely because they lost ONE election. Nothing else really matters at this point.
Really, really tired of the media thing. We were all gifted with a brain, use it or don’t, but if you are letting someone else decide how you think without actually forming our own opinion, might as well move back in with the monkeys. Take responsibility for your own thoughts, and deeds, or fuck off. We are supposed to be getting better, all of these years of civilization we should be, but we are not. We are faulty, not the system. Not partisanship, not Dems or Repubs, not even Trump... okay yeah, something went wrong there, they are not at fault, we are. It all begins and ends with us, yet all anyone can think of is who to blame.
Blame yourself. Seriously.
The news media's core mission isn't about telling anyone what to think though. It's about... reporting the news. I certainly agree with any critique of news organization employing far too many opinion people. But that's also a product of what viewers/readers tend to enjoy consuming, as you say about us being at fault.
But ultimately no one is capable of knowing -- on their own -- what bills congress passed, how the Supreme Court has ruled, what wildfires out west are doing, whether police disproportionately shoot black people, what happened in a French terrorist attack, or a Latin American election etc, etc.
How close are we to having cyborg super-soldiers? How scary is that? How is this remotely ethical?
As a general rule, I believe that any experiment that prioritizes the development of military technology at the expense of the safety of the test subjects should be considered not only unethical, but also dangerous. These experiments have a wretched history. I don't know what safety protocols Project MK-Ultra followed, if such protocols even existed, but several individuals that participated in that project as test subjects became highly messed up afterwards. On another note, but a related one, I saw a documentary about Ted Kaczynski the other day. Among the things that I didn't know was the fact that he was a test subject in a series of psychological experiments that took place at Harvard. These "studies", as they were called, do not seem to have been anything other than psychological torture. Experts continue to debate just how much of an influence these experiments had on Kaczynski's transformation into the Unabomber. The general consensus is that their influence was negligible. I'm rather skeptical of that conclusion. True, there was only one Unabomber, the rest of the test subjects did not turn into terrorists. But that does not mean that the experiments didn't screw them up in other ways. And it only takes one Unabomber to see how dangerous these experiments can turn out to be for the general public.
With an uncle in the hospital on oxygen and steroids, and a 90-year old great aunt waiting it out in quarantine after testing positive, I sign onto this 100%. Depraved indifference indeed:
https://youtu.be/BATG5F9UwoA
I have legitimate concerns about what a Biden Administration can even hope to accomplish. The outgoing Administration is basically burning everything to the ground on the way out the door, and doing so on purpose to make it impossible for the next occupant of the office to succeed. This kind of scorched earth campaign has never taken place during a transition before. It was inevitable, but it pretty clear the GOP has no problem destroying the country if they aren't in charge of it.
How close are we to having cyborg super-soldiers? How scary is that? How is this remotely ethical?
The report itself doesn't seem particularly scary because it's both public and talks about the need for ethics. In the past, this type of experimentation (and there's been lots of it) is something we've only found out about years later. I think it is inevitable that any technology (like implants) that's on the horizon for peaceful uses, will also be considered for potential military applications.
I have legitimate concerns about what a Biden Administration can even hope to accomplish. The outgoing Administration is basically burning everything to the ground on the way out the door, and doing so on purpose to make it impossible for the next occupant of the office to succeed. This kind of scorched earth campaign has never taken place during a transition before. It was inevitable, but it pretty clear the GOP has no problem destroying the country if they aren't in charge of it.
It's not unprecedented.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) lost his election.
He filed several frivolous lawsuits like Trump and threw temper tantrums like Trump. Bevin held onto the keys to the governor's mansion until the last possible second just to be a dickhead. Then the night before he was officially out of office he pardoned and commuted sentences for over 650 people including child rapists and brutal murderers and of course campaign donors. He didn't notify victims or anything.
This is not just folks at home watching OANN. This is a significant portion (damn near half) of ALL elected Republican House members and state Attorneys General:
This is not just folks at home watching OANN. This is a significant portion (damn near half) of ALL elected Republican House members and state Attorneys General:
Comments
Sending in the police to break into the homes of the government's enemies, point guns at your children, and steal your property qualifies as genuine, unashamed fascism.
"Nearly nine-in-ten U.S. adults (88%) say the $2 trillion economic aid package passed in March was the right thing to do, including identical majorities of Republicans and Democrats (89% each). More than three-quarters (77%) think it will be necessary for the president and Congress to pass legislation providing additional economic assistance.
Majorities of Americans say the aid package enacted last month will do a great deal or a fair amount to help a range of actors, including large businesses (77%), small businesses (71%), state and local governments (67%) and unemployed people (68%)."
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2020/04/21/positive-economic-views-plummet-support-for-government-aid-crosses-party-lines/
Simple arrogance and nothing more. As if Democrats are in the sole position to determine what is "misinformation" and what is true, based on nothing whatsoever. By all data we have, it is both independents and Republicans who express skepticism of mainstream sources of news. Trying to handwave the majority opinion away as partisanship falls flat on its face when you look at the simple fact that distrust in media crosses ideological lines and gets solid majorities while doing so. The most common opinion of mainstream media is having "no trust at all" in it. This has been a consistent trend for over a decade.
So is the majority of the country, regardless of political affiliation, crazy? Or is it the liberal wingnuts who can't doubt an authority figure if they tried? I think the answer is self evident. They are so high on the idea of their own superiority they can't entertain the idea that they could be wrong about something.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx
I always hated that poll because ‘mass media’ to vague of a term to have any use in what is now a broad news media market compared to when that poll first started in the 70s.
‘Mass media’ to a liberal might be the Sinclair network. To a Republican it might be the NYT or MNBC. To an independent it might be the garbage their friends share on Facebook or Twitter. It needs to be broken down more to specific sources, and I believe there was one that was shared here that actually showed ideological divides in trust such as Democrats not trusting Hannity and Republicans saying he is their most trusted news source. When a person’s opinion, which Hannity’s show is, becomes a trusted news source, then it becomes an problem and being unable to determine what is factual information and what is ‘misinformation.’
I don't see a problem in the way the question is phrased, really. "In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mainstream media, such as newspapers, T.V, and radio when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly" gives off a pretty clear impression of what they mean by mainstream media, in my view. It is clearly referring to the big networks, major newspapers, and talk radio. I think most people would understand what this question means if you ask them.
Asking which sources one trusts the most has its uses, but I feel like the amount of information you can extrapolate from that is limited, at least without asking how much faith you have in your most trusted source. Do people generally believe all that they hear from their most trusted sources, or do they merely find them the most tolerable out of a set of bad choices? For example, if someone were to ask me that question, I would say my go-to sources are the New York Times and The Washington Post. My actual trust levels for those sources are practically zero, but if I had to give an answer that would be it. Knowing those are my two most trusted sources doesn't actually tell you very much about my opinions, and you could draw conclusions that are far off the mark based on that.
I can answer my own concern. The majority of people do, indeed, see bias even in their own sources of news, and more than 80% see at least a moderate amount of bias in news coverage generally. More than 80% of people, correctly, also blame the media for the political divisions and polarization in the country. It's also worth noting that younger people are much more skeptical of mainstream news than older folks.
"Americans perceive less bias in their top news source than in the media more generally, yet a majority recognize bias in their go-to news source. Over half of Americans see “a great deal” (21%) or “a fair amount” (36%) of bias in the news source they rely on most. Perceptions of bias in one’s own media sources are roughly similar across the political spectrum of outlets. Americans who rely on Fox News (53%) have a similar viewpoint as those who use CNN (58%) in saying their trusted source has a great deal or a fair amount of bias, though Fox News users are more likely than CNN viewers to say their source has a great deal of bias (23% vs. 16%). "
https://knightfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/American-Views-2020-Trust-Media-and-Democracy.pdf
Second - The questions are generally non specific enough to be useful, as @deltago alluded - different media to different people are the problem, and its hard to use a poll looking at the issue from 20,000 feet to address the issue.
Third - There's a fundamental unpinning flaw in any argument about media trustworthiness in that it has become a pillar of conservative orthodoxy to disrespect and treat the media as an antagonist. News media is inherently biased (as all things are, see beginning) and is also biased so that it will be more readily consumed by the people of the political persuasion it appeals to. In a neutral environment, you would expect news media to reach out to each camp and offer each side what it wants: a news perspective with their political bias. The system is fundamentally upset because conservative orthodoxy doesnt just want its own news media (which they watch so much that it is the most watched mainstream news source in the USA) - they view all other news sources as the enemy.
An example of that dichotomy: Conservatives consider NYT and WaPo to be the enemy, despite having very strong and well respected/credentialed editorial boards that ensure they're less biased than many news sources out there. The WST is a conservative outlet with similarly strong editorial boards, and while plenty of Progressives vehemently disagree with their policy outlook - they arent viewed as inherently evil/awful for simply being a news source that doesnt conform to their views.
https://www.epi.org/publication/reshoring-manufacturing-jobs/
My eyes rolled so far into my head I nearly broke my optical nerve. These two outlets are still spouting unhinged conspiracy theories about Russia well after any possible justification for such claims has long since died. Nobody really believes that they do anything less than take the party line political position on everything. I read enough of these two in particular to know a manifest falsehood when I see it. You would be hard pressed to find a single article that does not get coated, at some point, with opinion and ideology.
Of course, they are far from the only ones, but they are also far from the gold standard of objective political coverage.
This is a key point imo. Newsrooms (not counting opinion here) recognize that their reporters have biases. And newsrooms are structured in such a way and try to train their reporters to compensate for these biases. I'm not saying that they do this perfectly. But the idea that the ostensibly play-it-straight outlets like the NYT, the WaPo and even the WSJ are either failing to recognize that they can be biased at all or simply don't care and are happy to report in a biased fashion is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how these newsrooms work.
And your comparison with science is apt. Even physicists and chemists working in laboratory conditions understand that bias can emerge in a study and thus take extreme and labor intensive measures to combat that. There's no such thing as even a perfect lab experiment. And veteran members of a newsroom recognize this reality in their work as well, and are doing the same.
Lastly, tailoring your coverage to always land between the parties isn't unbiased. That is also a bias. It is not the case that the midpoint between Republicans and Democrats on every issue is the objective truth. And unfortunately we live in a time where one party chooses to stake out factually wrong positions on a number of important issues. For one obvious example, the news media cannot treat both parties equally on the issue of climate change and also be objective.
That would assume the media covers climate change AT ALL, which they don't. Not in any meaningful way. And this is part of the reason why. Because they have to "both sides" everything, they'd rather just leave it alone rather than make Republicans angry.
... You do know Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, right? I mean - You're railing on Journalists by citing journalists. I suppose he's a good one, because he believes what you believe?
(Not only a journalist, but someone with... let's say - eccentricities).
I’ll also add, and have done this countless times in the past, I would really like to see an ‘untrusted’ news article from a mainstream media outlet and why what is written in it is ‘untrustworthy.’
Right now, it’s like screaming ‘Russian Hoax’ even though the Senate has found connections, and the Mueller report also found connections, just not enough to rise to the level to press charges. Regardless of how many times this is repeated, people will still use the phrase ‘Russian Hoax’ when talking about any news coverage of it, since that is what Trump and his cohorts screamed for 3 1/2 years until everyone on the right thought it was true.
Also worth noting that Greenwald has soft-pedaled some of corruption allegations against Lula in Brazil and more especially the proven widespread corruption against members of Lula's PT party.
And, I'm not even saying he was wrong to do so. The prosecution against Lula was farcical and immoral, and the conservative coalition of parties have been guilty of far worse corruption. So there's a perfectly justifiable reason to bend one's coverage that way.
But... that's exactly what Kasie Hunt is doing in remarking on Biden's honesty. I don't think she's saying Biden is always honest. Merely that, by comparison, he is much more honest. As Greenwald's former employer said of him, he believes he's the only honest journalist out there. But he's just as guilty of what he decries.
Glenn Greenwald's only north star at this point is his own narcissism. And he is among a group of about a dozen people who have decided it's a good career move to pick contrarian fights with centrist Dems on Twitter, almost exclusively. They aren't wrong about the career move part. I've actuall gotten into it with him on a couple of occasions on Twitter in which he responded over the years, and he is not a pleasant person. He craves the arguments he sparks.
And, afaik, The Intercept never disclosed this fact in the major Brazil stories he co-authored -- which is an elementary piece of transparency most newsrooms would do.
The love of Greenwald by folks who decry bias in the mainstream news isn't unique. It's the same for Fox News fans and now we're seeing a growth among even less scrupulous outlets like Newsmax. It rings super false to decry bias in the media and then promote outlets or individuals who are even more biased.
This is why you shouldn't rush an agreement for political purposes. This complaint won't get much traction, and I doubt Biden will throw a tantrum about it when the US loses and just chalk it up to 'poor negotiation skills of the previous administration.' Another article (which I can't find the non msn link to) has a former dispute settlement lawyer weigh into it:
The excitement ended abruptly in June, however, when the Canadian government announced exactly how it planned to roll out that extra market access for U.S. imports.
Canada’s decision to give much of the new quota to domestic dairy processors through import permits riled U.S. politicians and U.S. dairy industry groups. The concern for U.S. producers, Lamp said, is that Canadian processors are more likely to import lower-value milk products and turn them into higher-value, retail-ready products, rather than just import the high-value products.
“The economic value of the quota for the U.S. depends on the decisions that Canadian importers are making,” Lamp said.
The U.S. Dairy Export Council described Canada’s quota allocation plan as a show of “disregard for its USMCA dairy commitments.” Jaime Castaneda, the council’s senior vice-president of trade policy, said in a statement that Canada was “implementing its dairy tariff rate quota system in a manner designed to discourage full use of U.S. market access rights.”
For months, Lighthizer has been under significant bipartisan pressure from Congress to address the issue. A group of 25 senators wrote to Lighthizer in August, asking him to use to measures laid out in USMCA “to hold our trading partners accountable to their trade commitments.”
This week’s U.S. media reports suggested that Lighthizer could kickstart USMCA’s formal dispute resolution process soon. The U.S. move represents the first enforcement action under the new trade deal.
In the letter, the U.S. senators said Canada’s method of allocating the tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) has restricted U.S. industry from extracting full value from the extra volume it is now able to send into Canada.
“Canada must administer its TRQs fairly and in a manner consistent with its obligations under USMCA,” the letter reads. “It cannot be allowed to administer TRQs in a manner that discourages utilization or restricts the ability of the U.S. dairy industry to completely fill the established TRQs at advantageous price points.”
Canadian International Trade Minister Mary Ng’s office declined to comment on the reports of the coming action. But spokesperson Youmy Han denied allegations that Canada isn’t making good on its dairy commitments under the agreement.
“Canada’s administration of its dairy TRQs is in full compliance with its commitments under the new NAFTA,” she said in an email.
Lamp at Queen’s said the dispute over whether Canada is in compliance is “a really tricky” question.
“They may not be following the spirit of the agreement but, so far, I don’t see how they’re violating the letter of the agreement,” he said.
“The thing with a quota is you have to decide who gets the quota,” Lamp said.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who recently fired 7 whistleblowers who accused him of criminal activity, filed a motion with the Supreme Court, because apparently that's something you can do, asking the Supreme Court to block 62 Biden electors from four states because they are going to vote not for Trump but for Biden. This is yet another coup attempt.
Today, Trump joined fellow criminal Ken Paxton in the lawsuit. Critics have speculated that Paxton's lawsuit is a bid to curry favor with Trump in hopes of receiving a preemptive pardon. The FBI is investigating allegations by former senior staffers that Paxton used the attorney general’s office to benefit a campaign donor.
There are now over a dozen states with Republican AGs that are filing legal challenges arguing that the results in other states be thrown out because they didn't vote for Donald Trump. There are two parties in America at this point. One believes in democracy, the other wants to abandon it entirely because they lost ONE election. Nothing else really matters at this point.
They have opinions given to them that they want to hear by opinion journalists who spew partisan spin on everything on so called News channels.
When that's not enough to reinforce their existing opinions, they migrate to Newsmax and OANN to maintain their bubble.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55243014
How close are we to having cyborg super-soldiers? How scary is that? How is this remotely ethical?
The news media's core mission isn't about telling anyone what to think though. It's about... reporting the news. I certainly agree with any critique of news organization employing far too many opinion people. But that's also a product of what viewers/readers tend to enjoy consuming, as you say about us being at fault.
But ultimately no one is capable of knowing -- on their own -- what bills congress passed, how the Supreme Court has ruled, what wildfires out west are doing, whether police disproportionately shoot black people, what happened in a French terrorist attack, or a Latin American election etc, etc.
As a general rule, I believe that any experiment that prioritizes the development of military technology at the expense of the safety of the test subjects should be considered not only unethical, but also dangerous. These experiments have a wretched history. I don't know what safety protocols Project MK-Ultra followed, if such protocols even existed, but several individuals that participated in that project as test subjects became highly messed up afterwards. On another note, but a related one, I saw a documentary about Ted Kaczynski the other day. Among the things that I didn't know was the fact that he was a test subject in a series of psychological experiments that took place at Harvard. These "studies", as they were called, do not seem to have been anything other than psychological torture. Experts continue to debate just how much of an influence these experiments had on Kaczynski's transformation into the Unabomber. The general consensus is that their influence was negligible. I'm rather skeptical of that conclusion. True, there was only one Unabomber, the rest of the test subjects did not turn into terrorists. But that does not mean that the experiments didn't screw them up in other ways. And it only takes one Unabomber to see how dangerous these experiments can turn out to be for the general public.
I have legitimate concerns about what a Biden Administration can even hope to accomplish. The outgoing Administration is basically burning everything to the ground on the way out the door, and doing so on purpose to make it impossible for the next occupant of the office to succeed. This kind of scorched earth campaign has never taken place during a transition before. It was inevitable, but it pretty clear the GOP has no problem destroying the country if they aren't in charge of it.
The report itself doesn't seem particularly scary because it's both public and talks about the need for ethics. In the past, this type of experimentation (and there's been lots of it) is something we've only found out about years later. I think it is inevitable that any technology (like implants) that's on the horizon for peaceful uses, will also be considered for potential military applications.
It's not unprecedented.
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) lost his election.
He filed several frivolous lawsuits like Trump and threw temper tantrums like Trump. Bevin held onto the keys to the governor's mansion until the last possible second just to be a dickhead. Then the night before he was officially out of office he pardoned and commuted sentences for over 650 people including child rapists and brutal murderers and of course campaign donors. He didn't notify victims or anything.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kentucky-governor-defends-controversial-pardons-amid-news-fbi/story?id=67919374
So it's like exactly what Trump's doing except it was "only" Kentucky that got screwed not the entire United States of America.
62.1% of Kentucky's voters then turned around and punished the Republican party by voting for Trump in 2020. Facepalm.
Yeah, but Al Gore is such whiner... ?