I didn’t understand this at first as Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” discussed media consolidation many years ago. But of course the problem is that we’ve gone from a small number of companies controlling _the news_ to a small number of companies controlling _all media_. It’s less Chomsky and more Orwell.
As Neil Postman pointed out, it's less Orwell and more Huxley.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.""
The six they list doesn't include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc where a huge amount of media is consumed.
And would they count YouTube as "one" outlet? I would argue I have greater choice of amongst YouTube creators than I ever did compared to, say ABC, in 1983.
The analysis also seems flawed in that they evaluate movies based on box office sales. Which excludes giants like Netflix?
There may be issues here, but this article wasn't very good.
YouTube has editorial control over which videos are allowed to stay up, which videos are eligible to get monetized, and which videos are actively promoted. It's not just a web server with an index and a movie player.
Also missing is Nexstar Media which owns 197 US TV stations, and Sinclair Broadcast Group which owns 193 US TV stations.
And let's not forget iHeartMedia which owns around 850 US radio stations. Their stations reach nearly 100 million listeners a week, and nearly 250 million every month.
The 6 corporations "owning the media" concept came out just shortly before, and during, the rise of social media (e.g. I recall it circulating as far back as 2010-'12). In fact, reddit and social media are how a large number of people became aware of it.
Without picking a side or making an argument, it's basically a repeatable factoid that gets people wondering how much collaboration, and potential illicit collusion, is really being applied to the stream of messages they are exposed to on a daily basis.
Agree this piece was garbage and was exactly the kind of content that the actual tech companies who dominate media would want to promote, to deflect from their ability to silence anyone.
> The six they list doesn't include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc where a huge amount of media is consumed.
None of whom are major producers of their own content. They're just floating user-generated content and content from the corporations mentioned in the OP.
Skeptical about the 90% claim. Is time spent on YouTube, Netflix, Prime Video, The New York Times and Spotify (with Joe Rogan specifically) so insignificant as to be relegated to the "miscellaneous" 10%?
Joe Rogan is now Netflix. YouTube is not an owner so you have to attribute specific videos to owners/sources (and potentially reference their sources). 90% is good to be skeptical about, but is it so unrealistic?
I'd love to see which company is the most shared ones. Fringe ideas always seem the loudest/most shared, so that to me, would be a better measure of 'marketshare of reach'.
>Back in 2018, Jim Morrison, a singer, songwriter, and poet, who served as the lead vocalist of the rock band, once said: “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”
Jim Morrison Born: December 8, 1943. Died:July 3, 1971.
It is difficult for me to take an article seriously when there are glaringly obvious mistakes.
Long time employee of one of those companies, here.
To believe that there is some dictate about how a story is covered or why that comes from the top is to believe that we are way more organized than reality. Yes, some corporate-synergy exists to cross-promote, especially on morning shows, but when it comes to news, we are usually pushing so close to deadline there's no way to even allow for corporate control.
That said, there is a need to meet an ever decreasing budget. That's the parent co's real bias; to be cheap.
"I'm not saying you're self-censoring; I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. What I'm saying is that if you believed something different you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
My concern is not how things are covered, but what is covered. The article states that certain things (like the owner's dalliances outside his marriage) will never be covered at all. Chomsky and others talk about constraining the topics for discussion, and this seems the most concerning.
Well, first off, there are other examples (e.g. Sinclair) where it is far more obvious. Lots of local stations are beholden to advertisers and kill the stories.
But it's less "here's today's memo saying how to bamboozle people" and more "person X does Y, the bosses like Y, person X gets promoted/a show/a better timeslot" feedback loop. And the top bosses are selected by the owners. I assume you believe corporate culture can come from the top. Some of this (don't make up stories and sources) is undeniably good. But there is a subtler strain that encourages you to seek out and publish stories you know your bosses will approve of. If, for instance, you started publishing stories about how the KKK was releasing studies that had some really good points you would (rightly) be fired.
I'm not saying you or your coworkers are bad or biased. I'm saying the system you are working within is.
> To believe that there is some dictate about how a story is covered or why that comes from the top is to believe that we are way more organized than reality.
> To believe that there is some dictate about how a story is covered or why that comes from the top is to believe that we are way more organized than reality.
I'm pretty sure there are smoking gun memos and insider reports of dictates from the top at News Corp. or at least within Fox News, which they own. Is News Corp. / Fox just a special case?
This is not news for anyone paying attention to the media space. The big question is ... is there a way out? Or are we destined to have a small number of powerful organizations controlling world's information and in extension, our thought?
Probably not without government intervention. Antitrust or antimonopoly (or anti-oligopoly) enforcement would probably help. Perhaps copyright reform would help, although that is less obvious.
I’m sure there’s a way out, considering that I already consume the minority of my media from those sources. The internet is still a lot bigger than what’s listed here, and with cord-cutting, that has extended to my TV as well.
The turn of the century was probably the rock-bottom as far as choice in media is concerned. It has been getting better over the past 20 years.
Open source platforms provide an alternative to corporate social media. These platforms are developed on a non-profit basis and are hosted by volunteers across the globe. A growing number of such platforms are available today and millions of people are using them already.
Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter, and it’s currently home to over two million users. This was the first open platform to get serious traction, and has been growing steadily since its debut.
While Mastodon retains a similar user experience to Twitter, there is one major difference — it is a federated platform. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, there are many Mastodon servers that all talk to each other to create the Mastodon network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.
Mastodon is built around an open standard allowing other platforms to integrate with it. This led to a number of open platforms being created and joining the network. Collectively these platforms are referred to as the Fediverse. One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Facebook. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions. Some of the other platforms of interest are Pixelfed, PeerTube, Plume, and Lemmy.
Pixelfed is an alternative to Instagram that caters to artists and photographers. PeerTube is a YouTube alternative, Plume is a blogging platform akin to Medium, and Lemmy is a news aggregator forum inspired by Reddit.
All these platforms are developed in the open, and the developers themselves are often left-wing activists (as is the case with Mastodon and Lemmy). These platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and popups.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens. Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.
"Today, 6 media giants control a whopping 90% of what we read, watch, or listen to."
Where's the evidence for the 90% number here?
Every media mentioned is legacy media. People now spend more time consuming digital media than legacy media.[0] So I don't see how this claim can be true.
Exactly right. The 90% number is nonsense. Customers have more choice than ever.
I could start a media company tomorrow and everyone could watch/read/listen to it. Creating content has never been easier than it is today. Distributing content has never been easier than it is today. Creating a big audience has never been easier than it is today. The idea that these companies have "control" is laughable.
note I'm not suggesting creating great content or building an audience is easy per se. I'm just saying it's never been easier for a random person. About the only people for who the media business has become more difficult is... existing large media companies who used to control distribution via cable, tv licenses etc.
Like facebook, instagram, youtube
twitter? Now things are owned by two companies google and facebook but you can still get uncensored content on twitter? Not anymore.
Things are more controlled in the digital world.
Soon Apple will buy one of the major legacy companies, followed by Amazon, Microsoft which will allow Google to do the same.
Should we be concerned about them using their media properties to push narratives designed to consolidate their influence, or ask whether some of the things we believe might be artifacts of that influence, or maybe what the sources and motives of those narratives might be?
Kidding. This isn't the 90's. The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. Plus, big tech is finally being responsible and working on the right side of history, so we can all get aligned on fighting climate change, and finally force the assholes to pay everyone back for their empty status symbols like all the air they polluted with their SUVs, unpaid emotional labor, meat, and tax breaks they took from us, and finally give it to people who deserve it. We can even replace small thinking regional governments with better international collaboration and cooperation so that everyone will be equal no matter where they live, and we can end the privileged western lifestyle once and for all.
Kidding, not kidding. We should really look at what these companies are pushing.
Honestly the first two paragraphs of this article alone indicate that this article is a polemic intended to stir up a pogrom against so-called elites. This isn't intellectually gratifying: it's an angry political screed.
Furthermore, as a Jewish person myself something else jumped out at me: there is a long, long, long history of the word "elites" being associated with control over the media as an antisemitic dogwhistle. Any Jewish person will read this, see "the media is controlled by elites", and immediately understand that this is a restatement of antisemitic conspiracy theories that are over a century old. This article is wildly irresponsible.
I’m getting really fed up with people lobbing accusations of bigotry to try and dismiss others’ concerns and criticisms without actually providing any substantial counter-argument.
I gotta say, if you always read "elites" as being Jewish, then you're not just a priori ruling out any sort of class analysis, you're missing how antisemitic many of the non-Jewish elites actually are!
The article doesn't really show how this situation has evolved over time. Before cable didn't we essentially only have CBS, NBC, and ABC?
When I see other sources like OANN, or the disinformation being peddled from some corners, I am not sure what is a better alternative.
These media companies also employ a large number of people with diverse opinions. To suggest that a small group of elites are controlling the output of these companies is far fetched.
For some reason, a certain segment of Americans, have lost trust in these institutions that have been there all along. I fear the alternative.
I suppose an argument could be made that google has undermined newspapers which has resulted in consolidation and “official” narratives that forces people to turn to social media for (mis)information.
But I think the problem is too much of media is written by journalists who by and large are really bad at math, logic, and science so all to often what they end up writing isn’t much better than the alternative.
Witness the random hysteria around covid and vaccines. It almost seems like every article is concluding something different and the only consistent theme is that they really have no clue.
When was the last time you read a well reasoned argument based on per capita hospitalizations ordered by state and vaccine rates? Never, and I’ve looked. Journalists are incapable of reasoning about these problems because they lack basic math skills.
All they can say is vaccine good and anti vaccine bad. Since they can’t coherently say why that is true, too many people just dismiss them.
While this article is covering reports about traditional media, a few companies such as Facebook and Google control much of the online media landscape, and even what seem like scrappy challengers such as Clubhouse have businesses such as Andreessen Horowitz as investors (and after unfavorable reports by the likes of the NY Times, a16z is also making other efforts to create its own alternate media).
Unless you choose principle, high-quality journalism, you won't get it. For example, who wrote this report? Why do you trust them?
Not really, considering many people spend a majority of their time consuming "indie" content on Instagram or YouTube and it's never been easier to create and release content of any kind.
The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers.
But does your average person use more than six sources for news? You'll hear people talk about CNN, MSNBC, nyt, wsj, maybe la times. Most people also have three or four local news and maybe a paper.
If you stick with main stream media, I don't think most people look to more than a handful of places.
Lol hardly. The problem is no one controls the media so it can get very random. The crazy crap people believe isn’t coming from “corporate” media. You think they are writing about Qanon?
I think one way to help give the people back some control over the information flow is to educate as many people as possible in the skill of data evaluation. There are definite "outpoints" and "pluspoints" in any piece of information portrayed, and when you give someone the power to differentiate and evaluate the relative importance of individual data points, the controllers of said data become much less powerful. I guess this could be also likened to "critical thinking"? There will always be huge megacorp "mass media" and we need to learn the skills necessary to immunize ourselves to the negative effects of it.
I try not to get angry about "the bottom 20% eats 90% of the cheeseburgers" stats until I have a reasonable benchmark, or I have a really deep understanding of the "why" and "how" of a given disparity.
Two children raised in the same house with the same parents never have equal outcomes - I don't expect it anywhere else either (as a default assumption).
This is not a surprise is it? My gut tells me the large majority of us here at HN already knew this either empirically or intuitively. I’m not mad about this fact being publicized though. It definitely not obvious to everyone.
The super sad and disheartening part of this is even in a ‘free market’, capitalistic environment, in the long run this state of propaganda is still what we are reduced to.
[+] [-] doctor_eval|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wombatmobile|4 years ago|reply
As Neil Postman pointed out, it's less Orwell and more Huxley.
“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.""
[+] [-] wdr1|4 years ago|reply
The six they list doesn't include YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok etc where a huge amount of media is consumed.
And would they count YouTube as "one" outlet? I would argue I have greater choice of amongst YouTube creators than I ever did compared to, say ABC, in 1983.
The analysis also seems flawed in that they evaluate movies based on box office sales. Which excludes giants like Netflix?
There may be issues here, but this article wasn't very good.
[+] [-] ok123456|4 years ago|reply
YouTube has editorial control over which videos are allowed to stay up, which videos are eligible to get monetized, and which videos are actively promoted. It's not just a web server with an index and a movie player.
[+] [-] mtnGoat|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
And let's not forget iHeartMedia which owns around 850 US radio stations. Their stations reach nearly 100 million listeners a week, and nearly 250 million every month.
[+] [-] bGriz|4 years ago|reply
Without picking a side or making an argument, it's basically a repeatable factoid that gets people wondering how much collaboration, and potential illicit collusion, is really being applied to the stream of messages they are exposed to on a daily basis.
[+] [-] kcunnin16|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] powera|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|4 years ago|reply
None of whom are major producers of their own content. They're just floating user-generated content and content from the corporations mentioned in the OP.
[+] [-] prostoalex|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irjustin|4 years ago|reply
I'd love to see which company is the most shared ones. Fringe ideas always seem the loudest/most shared, so that to me, would be a better measure of 'marketshare of reach'.
At which point NYTimes likely falls really far.
[+] [-] kfarr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sperm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SapporoChris|4 years ago|reply
Jim Morrison Born: December 8, 1943. Died:July 3, 1971.
It is difficult for me to take an article seriously when there are glaringly obvious mistakes.
[+] [-] throwaway277|4 years ago|reply
To believe that there is some dictate about how a story is covered or why that comes from the top is to believe that we are way more organized than reality. Yes, some corporate-synergy exists to cross-promote, especially on morning shows, but when it comes to news, we are usually pushing so close to deadline there's no way to even allow for corporate control.
That said, there is a need to meet an ever decreasing budget. That's the parent co's real bias; to be cheap.
[+] [-] aahortwwy|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU
[+] [-] xrd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|4 years ago|reply
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Mockingbird
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
[+] [-] HWR_14|4 years ago|reply
But it's less "here's today's memo saying how to bamboozle people" and more "person X does Y, the bosses like Y, person X gets promoted/a show/a better timeslot" feedback loop. And the top bosses are selected by the owners. I assume you believe corporate culture can come from the top. Some of this (don't make up stories and sources) is undeniably good. But there is a subtler strain that encourages you to seek out and publish stories you know your bosses will approve of. If, for instance, you started publishing stories about how the KKK was releasing studies that had some really good points you would (rightly) be fired.
I'm not saying you or your coworkers are bad or biased. I'm saying the system you are working within is.
[+] [-] heavyset_go|4 years ago|reply
And yet exactly this happens[1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure there are smoking gun memos and insider reports of dictates from the top at News Corp. or at least within Fox News, which they own. Is News Corp. / Fox just a special case?
[+] [-] longtimegoogler|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] analyst74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thayne|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kube-system|4 years ago|reply
The turn of the century was probably the rock-bottom as far as choice in media is concerned. It has been getting better over the past 20 years.
[+] [-] egypturnash|4 years ago|reply
It's like the depressing version the "Lucky 10,000" XKCD.
[+] [-] yogthos|4 years ago|reply
Mastodon is an alternative to Twitter, and it’s currently home to over two million users. This was the first open platform to get serious traction, and has been growing steadily since its debut.
While Mastodon retains a similar user experience to Twitter, there is one major difference — it is a federated platform. Instead of all users having accounts on the same server, there are many Mastodon servers that all talk to each other to create the Mastodon network. If you have the technical expertise, it’s even possible to run your own.
Mastodon is built around an open standard allowing other platforms to integrate with it. This led to a number of open platforms being created and joining the network. Collectively these platforms are referred to as the Fediverse. One important aspect of the Fediverse is that it’s much harder to censor and manipulate content than it is with centralized networks such as Facebook. There is no single company deciding what content can go on the network, and servers are hosted by regular people across many different countries and jurisdictions. Some of the other platforms of interest are Pixelfed, PeerTube, Plume, and Lemmy.
Pixelfed is an alternative to Instagram that caters to artists and photographers. PeerTube is a YouTube alternative, Plume is a blogging platform akin to Medium, and Lemmy is a news aggregator forum inspired by Reddit.
All these platforms are developed in the open, and the developers themselves are often left-wing activists (as is the case with Mastodon and Lemmy). These platforms explicitly avoid tracking users and collecting their data. Not only are these platforms better at respecting user privacy, they also tend to provide a better user experience without annoying ads and popups.
Another interesting aspect of the Fediverse is that it promotes collaboration. Traditional commercial platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have no incentive to allow users to move data between them. They directly compete for users in a zero sum game and go out of their way to make it difficult to share content across them. This is the reason we often see screenshots from one site being posted on another.
On the other hand, a federated network that’s developed in the open and largely hosted non-profit results in a positive-sum game environment. Users joining any of the platforms on the network help grow the entire network.
Having many different sites hosted by individuals was the way the internet was intended to work in the first place, it’s actually quite impressive how corporations took the open network of the internet and managed to turn it into a series of walled gardens. Marxist theory states that in order to be free, the workers must own the means of production. This idea is directly applicable in the context of social media. Only when we own the platforms that we use will we be free to post our thoughts and ideas without having to worry about them being censored by corporate interests.
No matter how great a commercial platform might be, sooner or later it’s going to either disappear or change in a way that doesn’t suit you because companies must constantly chase profit in order to survive. This is a bad situation to be in as a user since you have little control over the evolution of a platform.
On the other hand, open source has a very different dynamic. Projects can survive with little or no commercial incentive because they’re developed by people who themselves benefit from their work. Projects can also be easily forked and taken in different directions by different groups of users if there is a disagreement regarding the direction of the platform. Even when projects become abandoned, they can be picked up again by new teams as long as there is an interested community of users around them.
[+] [-] rgbrenner|4 years ago|reply
Where's the evidence for the 90% number here?
Every media mentioned is legacy media. People now spend more time consuming digital media than legacy media.[0] So I don't see how this claim can be true.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/565628/time-spent-digita...
[+] [-] danielmarkbruce|4 years ago|reply
I could start a media company tomorrow and everyone could watch/read/listen to it. Creating content has never been easier than it is today. Distributing content has never been easier than it is today. Creating a big audience has never been easier than it is today. The idea that these companies have "control" is laughable.
note I'm not suggesting creating great content or building an audience is easy per se. I'm just saying it's never been easier for a random person. About the only people for who the media business has become more difficult is... existing large media companies who used to control distribution via cable, tv licenses etc.
[+] [-] ipaddr|4 years ago|reply
Things are more controlled in the digital world.
Soon Apple will buy one of the major legacy companies, followed by Amazon, Microsoft which will allow Google to do the same.
[+] [-] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
Kidding. This isn't the 90's. The only people who worry about an axis of collaboration between corporations and government to create a surveillance distopia are conspiracy theorists pushing misinformation now. Plus, big tech is finally being responsible and working on the right side of history, so we can all get aligned on fighting climate change, and finally force the assholes to pay everyone back for their empty status symbols like all the air they polluted with their SUVs, unpaid emotional labor, meat, and tax breaks they took from us, and finally give it to people who deserve it. We can even replace small thinking regional governments with better international collaboration and cooperation so that everyone will be equal no matter where they live, and we can end the privileged western lifestyle once and for all.
Kidding, not kidding. We should really look at what these companies are pushing.
[+] [-] amyjess|4 years ago|reply
Furthermore, as a Jewish person myself something else jumped out at me: there is a long, long, long history of the word "elites" being associated with control over the media as an antisemitic dogwhistle. Any Jewish person will read this, see "the media is controlled by elites", and immediately understand that this is a restatement of antisemitic conspiracy theories that are over a century old. This article is wildly irresponsible.
[+] [-] jwond|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superflit|4 years ago|reply
But is the article false?
[+] [-] longtimegoogler|4 years ago|reply
When I see other sources like OANN, or the disinformation being peddled from some corners, I am not sure what is a better alternative.
These media companies also employ a large number of people with diverse opinions. To suggest that a small group of elites are controlling the output of these companies is far fetched.
For some reason, a certain segment of Americans, have lost trust in these institutions that have been there all along. I fear the alternative.
[+] [-] blazespin|4 years ago|reply
But I think the problem is too much of media is written by journalists who by and large are really bad at math, logic, and science so all to often what they end up writing isn’t much better than the alternative.
Witness the random hysteria around covid and vaccines. It almost seems like every article is concluding something different and the only consistent theme is that they really have no clue.
When was the last time you read a well reasoned argument based on per capita hospitalizations ordered by state and vaccine rates? Never, and I’ve looked. Journalists are incapable of reasoning about these problems because they lack basic math skills.
All they can say is vaccine good and anti vaccine bad. Since they can’t coherently say why that is true, too many people just dismiss them.
[+] [-] 6f8986c3|4 years ago|reply
Oh no they don't. If you work in media, you either bow to leftist orthodoxy, or you get fired. See Bari Weiss, etc.
[+] [-] wolverine876|4 years ago|reply
Unless you choose principle, high-quality journalism, you won't get it. For example, who wrote this report? Why do you trust them?
[+] [-] lend000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grakel|4 years ago|reply
The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems slip through your fingers.
[+] [-] chrismcb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blazespin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _yoqn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] putlake|4 years ago|reply
And this one I'm not sure if it's just good PR by Amazon or laziness by media outlets or both: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6U2Un5kEdI
[+] [-] Wolfenstein98k|4 years ago|reply
I try not to get angry about "the bottom 20% eats 90% of the cheeseburgers" stats until I have a reasonable benchmark, or I have a really deep understanding of the "why" and "how" of a given disparity.
Two children raised in the same house with the same parents never have equal outcomes - I don't expect it anywhere else either (as a default assumption).
[+] [-] 40four|4 years ago|reply
The super sad and disheartening part of this is even in a ‘free market’, capitalistic environment, in the long run this state of propaganda is still what we are reduced to.