“Gas guzzler” is emotive wording, intended and used to elicit a response from the reader. It is not neutral language – it is propaganda messaging. There is, surprisingly, no official definition of what “gas guzzler” even means.
For every reporter, there are 6.2 “public affairs”/public relations staff working behind the scenes to manufacture the news reports to fit their desires.
American suburban life seems to regress to a mean of segregation. A 2011 analysis using Census Bureau data found that a “typical white” American lives in a neighborhood that’s 75 percent white. Source: A Tale Of Two Suburbs | FiveThirtyEight A real shocker – the “typical white American lives in a neighborhood that’s 75 percent white”. This is then interpreted by writer Clare Malone to mean that most white Americans live in segregated neighborhoods – in a country that is…
Numerous media reports, all sourced to social media posts, say Florida has food shortages due to Gov. Desantis’ policies. But they are showing photos and videos of empty store shelves that occurred in the past after hurricanes, or one video showed empty refrigerated goods section at Walmart. That actually happened – but it was due to a malfunctioning refrigeration system so food was temporarily removed while the unit was undergoing repairs. “Professional” media sourcing to anonymous items on social media tends to end badly.
From Wikipedia: “A weasel word, or anonymous authority, is an informal term for words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated.” Media commonly uses weasel words in headlines to create scary scenarios out of relatively low confidence predictions.
Most journalism in the U.S. today is “yellow journalism” that focuses on scandal, celebrity, “crisis”, the oppressed and fear and the prophets of doom – via scary headlines, and sample bias to cover stories that fit the yellow journalism narratives. Today, the most over used word in media is “crisis” – as you’ll see in this post, today, everything is a “crisis”.
It’s time again for the annual “World’s Happiest Country” bull shit survey results. Using a survey that doesn’t measure happiness, the survey proclaims – every year – the same Nordic countries as the world’s happiest. That’s because the metrics they use define happiness as living in a Nordic country! But again, don’t measure anyone’s happiness. And every year, the media twits fall for this survey.
The media loves the term “bomb cyclone”, a technical term from meteorology that sounds super scary. Most of the public has no idea what it means, and even with the official definition, it still is mostly meaningless to the public. But it sounds scary. And that’s the main point.
Half of recent news reports about holiday suicides spread disinformation that suicides go up over the holidays: Summary: Despite media claims that suicide rates increase dramatically over the holiday period, researchers report the average daily suicide rate during the holidays remain among the lowest rate of any period of the year. Source: University of Pennsylvania The holiday-suicide myth, the false claim that the suicide rate rises during the year-end holiday season, persisted in some news coverage through the 2021-22 holidays, according to…
Two years ago, we were told by multiple “sides” that misinformation and disinformation on social media threw election results. Two years later, oddly, everyone is pretending the same misinformation and disinformation no longer is an issue – which is not very believable. And then spin: “The amount of content we saw that you could call kind of election disinformation was actually larger than what we saw in 2020 — but overall, the effects were much more muted,” Source: Why misinformation…