The Community
General Category => Matters of Life and The Universe => Topic started by: Vyn on May 03, 2022, 08:23:16 AM
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To my great disbelief, the federal government of the United States of America has created a new department:
The Disinformation Governance Board
What in the actual fuck. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Standard for wartime home front operations. I expect the powers vested in it to be abused in 3... 2...
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^^^^^^
^^^^^^
Musk bought twitter 3 days prior, so those in power are afraid of losing some control.
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Pretty sure a billionaire buying Twitter is among "those in power". :)
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I think what Typhon meant was ones in Political power... :)
Considering the ammount of sheer censorship that has gone on in Twitter Musk might have some improvements if he really plans to follow through with his freedom of speech code....
As far as the disinformation bureau...good lord...that's a great way to waste tax dollars again...and ofcourse then that bureau can single handedly decide what is disinformation and what it not...and I can be rather certain that'll work just as well and just as impartial as the "fact" checkers in facebook! :D
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You mean the old white men in political power? Yep, Musk is one o' them, too. :)
More on the serious side, given the divided nature of power in the USA, there's no one group or faction that's truly in power in the sense of being able to advance an agenda unopposed. While the Democratic Party currently has a hand on the House of Representatives and Presidency, it is unable to control the Senate and the Republicans have a firm hand on the Supreme Court.
Given the lack of penalties handed down by current enforcement entities, I think this body will be very much like the others. It'll provide guidance and nudging far more than indictments and prosecutions.
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That's not the whole story. The DOJ is left leaning, the FBI is left leaning, and the left leaning main stream media ignores it all, along with providing cover for the Biden Cartel.
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I don't know about the "left-leaning" part to the DOJ and FBI. I'm doing more work with those agencies in my current job, and it seems like the staff tend to have more in common with each other than any particular party. There's always going to be someone who gets upset and airs a hurried evaluation that the agency is too this or not enough that, but the rest of the people there do their jobs and collect their paychecks.
For main stream media, what do you consider as what constitutes that group? What makes it left leaning - is it a monolithic lean to the left, or is it an overall lean to the left, with right-leaning media outfits going along with the overall narrative/agenda? Is "main stream" an actual definable characteristic? If I'm to understand what you're saying, I think I'd need to have you help me out with how you see these terms.
For my part, I see larger media outlets as not politically biased as much as they are corporately biased. Their advertising dollars come from oligolopical industries, so they do very little to disrupt/investigate larger corporations that write those big checks. There are stories that get too big to not be on the news, but cases of pollution, labor law violations, improper financial deals, and other crimes are passed over. In terms of entertainment, I've seen preachy things from both the left and the right that are easily accessible to me in terms of streaming content as well as broadcast and wide print/film distribution. Given that almost half the American voters chose Republican candidates in the recent election, they make up a courted demographic and media outlets catering to that demographic would, by virtue of their numbers of viewers/readers, be main stream.
I went to read up on the history of the accusation that the overall media field was leftist, it goes back to the 1940s and 1950s, but became heated in the early 60s when the FCC's Fairness Doctrine basically put a damper on editorialization that didn't provide equal time. Some news outlets just stopped doing op/ed segments, but the conservative outlets were predominantly editorial/opinion shows with little "hard news" content, and their programming suffered most when stations chose simply to drop editorials.
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If it was Don Junior's laptop scandal instead of Hunter Biden's laptop scandal, there would be non-stop coverage of the story by every major network. That's just 1 example.
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But that's speculation. How can speculation be an example?
Also, "every major network" has to include Fox News, which has more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.
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Well speculations never mattered when talking about Donald Trump...the media ran wild with speculations. So that again kind of shows the two faced moralities on the matter...
But this is "been there done that" category and there's really no reason to go further anymore I think.
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A few things:
1. The media has always been at the behest of whoever controls it. Nothing in that regard has changed throughout history, however the channels through which it can be ingested have increased dramatically. Here's an interesting article in The Atlantic that discusses much of that as it relates to current trends: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/?msclkid=27330799c5a311ec845bfaef35bbbb1a (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/?msclkid=27330799c5a311ec845bfaef35bbbb1a)
2. Charger is right, we've all been there and have our t-shirts regarding The Donald.
3. The last thing the United States needs is a Ministry of Truth.
4. Half of the people in this country think the other half are morons, and vice-versa.
5. I'm not in the habit of reading The Atlantic. Not because of its well-known bias (I'm capable of seeing through that), but because it tends to use loaded language (which I find condescending) and exudes a certain amount of pretentiousness that I don't like.
6. There is no six.
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For speculation, though, there's a difference about what we think will happen and speculation used in media reporting. I agree, I don't like speculation in reporting - that's editorial work.
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And as for that new department, it can't be any worse than having a House Un-American Activities Committee...
... oh, hang on there...
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After this I'll say no more.
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Fair enough.
My "say no more" comment would be that much of the modern conservative opinion of journalism is presented as an article of faith for the movement, and has been since the 1960s. It's something that the movement does not consider rationally, as much of the mythology that drives the movement forward uses that belief as a cornerstone. But, at the end of the day, it's a belief on the level of creationism or flat-earthism, and protected by its believers as fiercely as those who are passionate about other science-denying systems of belief. By insisting that the field of experts is limited only to those who present a view in harmony with the key belief and disparaging completely critics of the view with an argument that, by being critics, they are part of the conspiracy or are a "them" to the faithful "us", the view itself becomes insulated from rational challenge and takes on elements of an informally-organized religion.
I think it's fair enough also to say that in the past I've let politics become my religion and I grew to be uncomfortable with the results to the point where I wanted to change my life and make political views take a back seat. Even if the political views arose from a set of facts that I had before me, I couldn't allow the views others were stoking to become my guiding force, as they were ultimately using those views for their own ends. Even if many of those ends I found agreeable, I was not well-served by building emotional responses out of political rhetoric. The change I chose to make was to start on the path of nonviolence, specifically Gandhi's satyagraha method, and that required both full honesty in myself and setting aside quick thoughts and passions so that I could find peaceful responses. Now, I still have a belief in God and I don't see religion itself as a bad thing - but I do see when men take an existing religion and pervert it to their benefit as a bad thing. I consider it just as bad when movements borrow religious elements and co-opt them as part of their ideology, making a religion of their politics or agenda.
That's my bit, and I want you to know, Typhon, that I truly do want to hear you out. I don't want to ask you a question about what you think as a kind of trap. I'm not looking to catch you - or anyone - in your words. That's a form of violence to me, and it only results in a cycle of further violence that nobody will "win". But if we continue to have a conversation, even if we disagree on things, we can have an ultimate victory in friendly, civil discourse.
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...they were ultimately using those views for their own ends..
Yes indeedy.
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So, the Feds have "paused" the new Disinformation Governance Board and the person who was chosen to lead it has resigned. Let's hope it is a permanent pause.
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So, the Feds have "paused" the new Disinformation Governance Board and the person who was chosen to lead it has resigned. Let's hope it is a permanent pause.
This may well wind up as a money pit and not an actual bureau with teeth.
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It surprised me that the yankies have an actual disinformation department, in the UK it's built into normal government! :D
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It surprised me that the yankies have an actual disinformation department, in the UK it's built into normal government! :D
:lol: