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Category: Media

Journalism: An example of excellent journalism

Journalism: An example of excellent journalism

Good journalism is being done. In addition to the embarrassing mistakes noted on this blog, there are also examples of excellent journalism. To provide some balance between the dreadful and the excellent, examples of great journalism will also be shared here.

This blog is primarily about propaganda messaging. Media plays a role in propaganda delivery, some times as propagandist and sometimes as counter propaganda. An example of the latter would be the BBC’s good reporting on the Amazon wild fire situation, noting that both media and social media spin were stretching the truth and leaving out critical context.

Journalism: Follow up on the Des Moines Register fiasco

Journalism: Follow up on the Des Moines Register fiasco

Follow up on the Des Moines Register fiasco of he past week. The reporter, Aaron Calvin, was fired, but blames everyone else, says he is the victim of a right wing conspiracy and his own tweets were all taken out of context. The interview was done by his former employer, Buzzfeed News, which itself has a conflict of interest in reporting this.

Interesting comment on FB about journalists that commonly act like a school yard bully; seems a fair description of what happened here.

Climate communications: Rasmussen poll: 51% Of Young Voters Believe Humanity Could Be Wiped Out Within 10 Years

Climate communications: Rasmussen poll: 51% Of Young Voters Believe Humanity Could Be Wiped Out Within 10 Years

51% of voters under 35 believe human life may be wiped out on earth with in 10 years. This assertion is not supported by any scientific evidence but is a fear created out of thin air by lying, exaggeration, hyperbole by politicians, activists and media propagandists. The result is an induced epidemic of mass anxiety with many now requiring medical care.

How Negative News Distorts Our Thinking | Psychology Today

How Negative News Distorts Our Thinking | Psychology Today

News focused on the negative, is overly dramatic, leads us to false conclusions about the world and is largely pointless speculation, fear and dlick-bait headlines designed primarily to attract eyeballs to advertisers. News is also largely a waste of our time, says Psychology Today.

Climate Communications: 60+ news outlets sign on to coordinated, global “Covering Climate Now” messaging campaign

Climate Communications: 60+ news outlets sign on to coordinated, global “Covering Climate Now” messaging campaign

Newspapers worldwide have agreed to jointly engage in a global Covering Climate Now project, where newspapers and other news outlets simultaneously use their advocacy journalism to persuade readers to take action on climate. This is indistinguishable from a global, coordinated propaganda operation and may back fire, turning people off from understanding and undertaking meaningful actions on climate issues.

Great example of 100% false news (an oldie)

Great example of 100% false news (an oldie)

The illustration graphic is false, although you might believe it is true because most of the news media reported this topic, as illustrated in the graphic.

The reported information, however, is 100% false and is readily shown as false by a simple example (click through to read why its false). This incorrect information was widely reported and established as a fact. This occurred either because reporters had no understanding of what they report on (far too often to be the case) or because they deliberately misled their readers and viewers.

Journalism: How the media reports on murders of the transgendered – and how it conflicts with the data

Journalism: How the media reports on murders of the transgendered – and how it conflicts with the data

There are many news reports about a growing “epidemic” of transgender murders in the United States. However, the data show a nearly constant trend line from 2015 to 2019. Further, the transgender murder rate, based on the data, is 1/4th to 1/2 that of the overall U.S. population. (It is possible that the underlying data is poor, which the Human Rights Campaign hypothesizes – but news reports calling out an epidemic in the absence of data to support that are not even pseudo news reporting – they are creative fiction writing.)

All murders are wrong, period. Violence and hate are wrong, period.

This post is about news reporting, not the transgender community.

Climate communications: The Amazon fires pseudo news panic illustrates how easy it is to throw an election via social media

Climate communications: The Amazon fires pseudo news panic illustrates how easy it is to throw an election via social media

Social media is a frictionless platform for the dissemination of propaganda messaging. Seeing what just took place in the past few days, can you imagine the firepower about to be unleashed during the next national election in the U.S.? The brutal propaganda messaging on social media threatens to take down democracy.