A public communications expert critiques the public health communication during the pandemic – and finds it to have been a total failure, and along the way, destroying trust and credibility in public health. The long-term consequence is few believe public health, with good reasons. This is not how it should have been done.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”
How to embarrass yourself – with a chart. DCCC sent this out saying “Thank you Joe Biden” – for a 2 cent or 1/2 % decrease in prices after a massive run up in prices. This is basically cherry picking the Y-Axis to make it look like there was a large drop. Chart mutilation is a common method of propaganda.
Nature published over 40 papers that were nonsense gibberish and has now retracted them.
CBC makes a fool of itself. Geesh. Some calculations I did a couple of years ago suggest that for an asthmatic that uses an inhaler every day, this accounts for perhaps 1-2% of their household’s daily greenhouse effect. This is not a high priority area for the CBC to freak out over. Two years ago, Time Magazine insultingly said asthmatics were “choking the planet” thinking that was a funny play on words. Not only was it rude and inconsiderate, it was not true.
Newsweek demonstrates yet again that it is a perennial fake news publisher by cherry picking a data series to prove their point. This is bull shit level reporting and why no one believes mainstream news reports anymore.
Years ago I suggested that FB was designed to create a “culture of perpetual outrage”. People who are emotionally engaged are more susceptible to advertising messages – plus, they are likely to stay connected to FB for more minutes. Internal documents reveal that FB not only knew this but gave emotional content posts higher leverage in The Algorithm that decides what you see online.
A simple research study demonstrated how FB’s algorithm readily amplify extremist political viewpoints on the left and right. The root cause is that FB optimizes for time spent engaged with FB – and does not optimize for what you may wish to see. The result is FB optimizes to keep you perpetually outraged.
Ooops – 9/11 news story retracted after discovering almost all of the article was fake or wrong. Ouch.
Academic research confirms the media’s obsession with “missing white women” (specifically, young, blonde, blue eyed women). When someone goes missing, coverage is extreme for missing young white women, drops significantly for missing women of color, and is almost non-existent for men, with coverage of missing white men receiving the least amount of press.