Media Malpractice, Hoax Purveying, Misleading Narratives and Other Sins of the 4th Estate Thread

Back again on the great Big Soccer, so I took a look around to see how things were going here and, of course, directionally speaking, nothing much has changed in the P&CE echo chamber after all these years.

There was at one point a “Fake News” thread, which has petered out, maybe because one side was more often the guilty party, and besides, it’s a phrasing that that gives lots of folks the conniptions because they thought the phrase was concocted by the Bad Orange Man. Turns out they were wrong about that as well, (he just borrowed it, like his mortgages) and perhaps we will address that particular incorrect aspect of this never ending saga at some point.

Any-who, we won’t go with that labeling.

But our 4th estate—and their Fact Checking acolytes – are such an absurd mess it can’t go unnoticed.

Whether it’s the Duke Lacrosse fiasco, the Covington Kid, Juicy Smollet and his mid-winter Chicago escapade (“He’s not only black, and gay, he is also French”**), or the curiously sudden appearance of “sexual abuse” victims of Brett Kavanaugh JUST when he’s about to be installed on the Supreme Court, the media landscape is just littered with stories that are insanely ridiculous, jump-to-conclusion stupid, wildly inaccurate, completely false, implication avoiding, totally made up, and/or astonishingly misleading.

And virtually ALL of said stories are in service of the prevailing “narrative” to support “what-every-right-thinking-person-needs-to-faithfully-(even religiously)- believe-in-no-matter-what.”

Oh, one other thing.

Whenever someone uses the term “misinformation” it is almost ALWAYS code for, “Shut up with those arguments or plausible alternatives that either

(1) I don’t like, and/or
(2) expose my warped world view, and/or
(3) make my political co-religionists look stupid, and/or
(4) undermine my repressive censorious autocratic oligarchical power ”

The technical term for #4 is the Brin-Dorsey-Zuckerberg Syndrome.

So here goes!

**Source Dave Chapelle, who lives in middle America and knows a thing or two about fakery.

 

First up, no noose is bad news.

September 5th 2021 CBS News in Baltimore

Hey, It must be the proud boys, or a bunch of gun toting MAGA hat wearing troglodytes. As the chiron on the video says, “Racially Motivated Vandalism Found At Severna Park Library Historical Marker”

Uh, as Lee Corso would say, NOT SO FAST! Three days later....

OH, darn!! Flowers!!!!

Thought we had the Great White Supremacist THIS time!! They're still out there, for sure! For sure!!

 

A "study!!"

And not just ANY study. ANOTHER study!

Right. It's all over but the shouting now.

By the way, I hate the term "liberal bias." It sounds so...anodyne, like "I have a bias against Bermuda shorts and argyle socks as an ensemble."

 

Horse paste? Or Horse Shit?

Rolling Stone, the paragon of journalistic ethics that once gave you the drug fueled ramblings of Hunter Thompson, and a picture of John Lennon naked in a submissive fetal position, among other astonishing material too terrifying to mention, of course couldn’t resist dabbling in investigative journalism once AGAIN.

You’d think the Sabrina Erdely saga would make them think twice about what they publish, but apparently they don’t even think ONCE.

Covid not only fill its victims’ lungs with gunk, it fills the heads of Rolling Stone editors with stupidity.

To wit,




"Doctor says." Hmm.

Wow, what a mess! Gun shot victims – though they were, you know, flyover NRA loving Okies who likely have AR-15s on a pick up rack so we can’t feel TOO sorry for them – are being turned away because—horrors!!—the ER is swamped with ANOTHER cohort of OKIE yokels in extremis who have slathered on, consumed, or otherwise misused a “horse dewormer!!”

The story then proceeds to spread like a California wildfire. Virtually anyone who is anybody on one particular side – and ladies and gentlemen, we know who belongs to that side – picks up the story and breathlessly repeats it. And we know who the queen of that side is, don’t we?? The queen of MSNBC, the Rhodes Scholar who night after night brought you ANOTHER preposterous wrinkle in the Russia collusion story….you guessed it!

Rachel Maddow. And how could she resist? It’s right in her wheel house.


Alas, it turns out that being a Rhodes Scholar apparently makes you stupid. Because yes, the story was 100% false, and a couple of calls by one of Rachel’s minions could have spared her the humiliation. But why worry about humiliation – we have a narrative to work here, people!!

And not just her! Do, please do, work through Drew Holden’s thread showing how an entire sub-universe of people who really should know better just swallow this entire enchilada. We’re talking pundits, other doctors, a complete battalion of idiots.

First, for context, here’s the original piece from @RollingStone and the follow up from the actual hospital saying the story was BS and that the one (one!) person the story quotes doesn’t work at that hospital anymore (and hasn’t in months). pic.twitter.com/6k4FjaQWD3

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) September 5, 2021

Oh, in case you didn’t follow, the “source” for the story – the ONLY source – was a doctor who wasn’t even working at the hospital in question. The hospital even issued a statement which you can find on Holden’s thread.

Completely, totally, entirely made up.

 

Not to worry, I just took care of it. We're back on track

 

Awww....missed all you guys too!!

Now, where did I put those tissues...you know the box I almost completely used up after the T&T game? It's around here somewhere. I swear.

 

Was the fetus hungry?

 

Still VERY independent though. Some of us have to grow.

You know, get beyond--WAY beyond--Mitt Romney, who, if folks recall, used to be Hitler.

For a while.

You see some folks stagnate -- more or less in the same playpen.

 

A strange combination of masochism and sadism, and a belief that maybe, just maybe, our current national team can make some serious noise.

I wrote in Melania Trump. Or was it Michael Avenatti? That was so long ago, it might as well have been in the last century, when some people foolishly believed that Chris Armas was somehow a bad soccer player.

If I didn't, would I be banned from the virtual world of big soccer the same way this guy's been banned from his virtual Zoom classes at Rutgers?

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2021...rtual-classes-because-hes-not-vaccinated.html

As we all know the virus propagates in so MANY ways that we have to be super duper careful. Dr. Fauci told me so when I fist bumped him at a DC United game, commiserating as we did about the end of Ben Olsen's coaching career.

Gotta go put my mask on now and snark down some of my own carbon dioxide.

 

Omigod you got me!! I’m so ashamed now.

NOT.

I know it’s hard but don’t be silly.

I understand that some minds believe if someone provides examples in one sub category of a larger category — and that sub category can be HUGE or hugely representative of a warped mindset—that they are saying the sub category applies to the BIGGER category ALL the time.

Such is a naive, illogical argumentative technique that would get you cut from the high school debating team.

 

Here’s another way to think about it that weaker minds might miss.

Almost always news stories have “facts.” For example I have no doubt that the Dr. said what he said about gun shot victims in Oklahoma. His saying it really happened but his statement was a fabrication.

But sometimes the facts speak for themselves and reflect the true reality.

And of course sometimes those very facts are in service at the moment of a warped hideous world view.

Oh one final thing. If a person believes SO literally that a specific thread simply HAS to deal with ONLY the topic of that thread in the most narrow sense, that could reflect a censorious attitude.

Could.

 

Nice picture. Very demure. Lift weights much?