The Dilemma in One Question
that i'll ask several different ways
When was the last time you read something in the mainstream news media — an op-ed piece, a major revelation that some clever and persistent investigative reporter dug up, a sharp bit of news analysis — that surprised you? When was the last time you read something in the news that changed your understanding of a major issue? When was the last time something in the “news” reframed an issue in your head with an argument you hadn’t anticipated, or with new evidence that you hadn’t heard before? “Man, I’d never thought of it that way,” you say, tossing the New York Times down on the coffee table.
Related, when was the last time a report or a panel discussion on television news surprised you and made you see something differently?
My impression is that the public sphere is now made up almost entirely of people saying things that we already know they’re going to say. “Jennifer Rubin will now analyze the presidential debate.” You don’t need to hear that. There’s no need to listen to any of it, ever. Andrea Mitchell is for [current thing]. Of course she is. If you know what [current thing] is, what’s the point of an Andrea Mitchell?
It’s all so dull.
There are at least a couple hundred prominent media and academic figures in the United States who could die tonight without anyone noticing, as long as there was a tape or a computer program of some kind to go on posting the received wisdom of the day under their names.
Of course they regard their role as cognitive programming through simplicity and repetition — delivering premasticated symbol-food to the dumb poors, who need to be fed like baby birds. Imagine spending your life as that nearly mechanical simulation of a maternal feeding device. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy. Lunch break.
So this is a serious question: When was the last time the news surprised you with something new and unanticipated — with an original thought of some kind?
I dunno - I saw a headline today that Nazis were poised to take over the government of France. Or something. That was surprising. 😂
The most I can say about the mainstream press in their straight reporting (set aside opinion journalism for a moment) is that sometimes they inadvertently report enough detail that you can figure out the truth using some simple deductive logic or even basic arithmetic (journalists are particularly math averse). Just ignore their spin and conclusions and look for specific numerical details that seem credibly reported.
It's like a secret power. If you did that, you would have figured out in like April or May 2020 that COVID wasn't a huge deal to anyone under 70 and conducted your life accordingly (by reading the mortality stats off the Diamond Princess cruise ship, which was about as good of a well-bounded study as you could get at that point with known case numbers and - critically - a known total population; that would have given you enough hard data to justify ignoring all the other fact-free fear porn). There are a thousand other little truth nuggets that will change your life if you learn how to find them and ignore the chaff.
But the whole situation more than a little bit like Pravda, where to get anything useful out of such mainstream reporting you basically have to cross examine it like Perry Mason and not accept the plain reading of whatever narrative their trying to spin at face value.
Here's another one: when 51 intelligence officials say that Hunter Biden's laptop has "all the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation," they're telling you that it's *not* in fact a Russian intelligence operation. They're not bound by some code of medical ethics not to publicly diagnose at a distance. If they can't bring themselves to say in so many words "in my opinion, it is more likely than not that the laptop is a Russian intelligence operation" it's because they don't truly think it's a Russian intelligence operation. They just think that it's a real authentic story that by coincidence shares some traits with Russian intelligence operations and they want to trick you into thinking they've diagnosed it as a Russian operation, even if they technically never said that. Because a shocking number of those officials were lawyers trained at top-tier law schools and they think that this clever sort of wordplay saves them from sin.
And don't get me started on mainstream opinion journalism.