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…
A reporter named David Axe writes the same, scary, fear-inducing “worst Covid variant yet” headline story nearly every month the past year. He’s been wrong every time. But his editors don’t seem to mind.
This Axios news report makes the classic reporter error – providing percentage increases without every providing a starting value. Does a scary +100% mean something increased from 1 to 2? We have no way of knowing.
91% of US news about Covid topics was negative – even when reporting on positive vaccine developments or low case counts in schools. The media learned that consumers demand negativity – I postulate this is because consumers who are suffering from hysteria and anxiety seek out news that confirms their anxiety, and that being anxious is okay.
Two appalling bad studies were widely shared by “experts” on social media. One was so bad, and its errors so obvious, that they only way they could have decided to share was to do so without having read even the abstract of the study.
By midday Monday, fewer than 1,000 flights were delayed in the U.S. Earlier in the weekend, airlines had canceled hundreds of flights while more than 10,000 were delayed. Source: U.S. flight disruptions finally ease as the holiday weekend winds down They spent the past two weeks telling us that airline travel was in total chaos and the 4th of July weekend would be a total meltdown. it was not. They then began lumping “delayed” flights with the “canceled” numbers –…
Reporter asserts all Covid deaths in the U.S. were preventable. My pointing out that Covid was not controlled anywhere in the world (having accurate data collection and reporting), and my pointing out that 27 other countries had worse outcomes than the U.S. is “denying that the deaths were preventable”. Therefore, you are cautioned that my inconvenient questions and observations are official disinformation, as determined by the Associated Press. Also, remember Betteridge’s Law – any headline that ends in a question mark means the story is bull shit.
Zuckerburg’s ownership of Facebook and Instagram, billionaire Jack Dorsey’s prior control of Twitter, and Jeff Bezos’ ownership of The Washington Post are all okay – but Musk buying Twitter to open it up for free speech is bad. These arguments against Musk buying Twitter are not making a lot of sense.