The headline is from a Jay Rosen essay about the role of reporters which always struck me as the right way to think about the role of the correspondent.
I’m planning on taking a year-long trip. John encouraged me to write about it, and maybe I will. I won’t be posting for a few days as my wife and I travel to the Dakotas to take care of her mother, who has treatable, curable cancer in her mid-80s and is tolerating chemo quite well. Unfortunately, this will be a replay of my trip there last year to take care of my mother, also in her mid-80s, who was dying of a less treatable, not curable cancer. Since the vaccination rate in the county where we’re heading is 37%, we’ll be N95’ing it and on a quasi-lockdown.
I don’t know if I’ll write about our destination’s lack of vaccination — there’s not much to say other than Fox News, Facebook, lack of education, and pure prideful stubbornness. But if I do write about it, I won’t be writing stuff like this CBC story about a rural Manitoba municipality (similar to a county) with a 24% vax rate:
An explanation for Stanley’s low vaccination rate cannot be attributed to a single cause, residents and historians say.
Any account deserves a nuanced, layered understanding, they say, but it stems at least partially from generations of conservative Christians who feel the government has repeatedly turned on them.
“Partially” is doing some heavy work in that sentence because the area was settled by Mennonites. But at least they hint at the real issue:
The scourge of misinformation is evident in some of the discussions CBC had in the municipality. Among them, a retired nurse offered an array of debunked falsehoods, including ivermectin — a horse dewormer that also has a different formulation for prescribing to people with parasitic worms — being a cure for COVID-19, the local hospital filling up because people got vaccinated and even a person becoming blind because they were inoculated. None of those statements is factual.
If the Herman Cain Awards and SorryAntiVaxxer.com has shown anything, it’s that a few stupid memes repeated like prayers on Facebook, combined with a political effort to turn being unvaccinated into a tribal identity, has yielded a group of people who refuse the vaccine. Is there anything there that requires “nuance” or “layers”? If so, I don’t see it.
narya
Since you’re here, I wanted to tell you that the fountain pen post prompted me to dig mine out and fill one, and then to order new ink (from Anderson Pens), which I’m now using in another one I filled. I tried the Pilot Iroshizuku three-color collection (purple, blue, green), and I’m so happy. I’m using my pens again! I’m working from home, so I don’t need to worry about carrying them around! Seriously–much gratitude sent your way for inspiring me to reconnect with some beautiful and functional objects.
dr. bloor
A shame that “bullshit” is not permitted in CBC’s style book.
Baud
Best wishes to MIL.
Betty Cracker
Y’all are good people to look after your families like this. I’ve dealt with some of that myself, so I have an idea of how exhausting it can be. Take care of yourselves, and stay safe.
Elizabelle
Safe travels, mistermix. Will look forward to your field reports. Just think of them as some exotic, inscrutable pack animal. Observe and report.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@narya: Good to hear it. I may do a follow up on good stationery soon, since there was interest. Asa-gao, the blue in the set you bought, is a favorite of mine.
catothedog
Facebook’s own research:
In 2019, Almost All of Facebook’s Top Christian Pages Were Run By Foreign Troll Farms
“Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church,” wrote the report’s author, Jeff Allen, who used to be a senior-level data scientist at Facebook.
Jess
Just as West Germany had to put limits on free speech to root out fascism and anti-semitism, I think we’re at the point where we are going to have find a way to limit the misinformation and propaganda on the radio, cable programing, and the internet. Not sure how to do this, but if the social media platforms decide to take the issue seriously, that will be a big help. Humans are easily brainwashed, and only occasionally and barely rational; we need to admit that and find a workaround. I’m a big fan of the Enlightenment and the political system envisioned by the Founding Fathers, but I think they were too optimistic about the freedom+responsibility+reason package.
Tony Jay
“You’re not the boss of me, Lefty”
Covers all issues, doubts and situations. It’s simply an intolerable burden on their self-image and more dangerous than anything else, up to and including the risk of agonising death, that anyone outside their chosen tribe should ever be right when they are wrong.
Anoniminous
It seems clear we’re not going to get to the end of Covid-19 until enough of these people get sick and die so Reality will finally break through their little ignorant hick brains. And that’s not going to happen until hospitals, etc., start refusing care to people who haven’t been vaccinated.
John Revolta
Cletus safari! Be sure to hit all the diners!
The Dangerman
They do not have a right to a job. They don’t have a right to go wherever they want (stores, etc). Go live in a cave fuckers.
TheQuietOne
Open thread! Thanks for the book recommend. I’m halfway through Pirates of Mars and it is excellent. Most SF lovers would be happy with it I think.
My recommend: Brass Against-The Pot (Tool cover) since a friend suggested Brass Against they’ve shot to the top of my play list. Any song featuring Sophia Urista is golden.
Adam C
I read the article. The reporter was happy saying “it stems at least partially from generations of conservative Christians who feel the government has repeatedly turned on them” but the only example I could find was that 100 years ago the government made them send their kids to school.
Betty Cracker
@catothedog: I’ve got to hand it to them, it was pretty ingenuous of the foreign troll farms to weaponize our own stupidity against us. I 100% blame Trump for politicizing the pandemic, but I don’t doubt for a moment bad actors at home and abroad jumped at the opportunity to amplify, up-level and spread the anti-science demagoguery Trump started in such a way that there’s a non-trivial chance the country ultimately collapses. They probably spent .00000000001% of our defense budget to do it too.
Another Scott
@catothedog: Nobody could have predicted that a platform that is designed for overbearing data collection, rewards and profits from Engagement and cost-free rapid reproduction and bots and outrage, could be weaponized by foreign actors.
I mean, it’s inconceivable that there’s any problem!!1
But if there is, I’m sure Z and his algorithm boys will get right on it…
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
I remember when the stereotype of liberals was that we were the ones who were obsessed with politics. Funny I don’t recall a liberal mass suicide movement to demonstrate our political loyalties.
Major Major Major Major
Oh gosh! Hang in there and enjoy the eventual vacation/sabbatical.
Anti-vaxxers… mandate it and let the free market sort em out.
SiubhanDuinne
Wondering how zzyxz (sp?) is doing today. I hope he’s feeling much better!
SiubhanDuinne
Safe travels, mistermix.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Ah, the savage and primitive Mennonites. I don’t think it really takes much to get a culture that wants to go back to the 1350s going on this kind of stuff.
Another Scott
@Jess: These private platforms need to actually enforce their policies – if they won’t, then governments need to take action against them (break them up, etc.). And stronger policies are probably needed, too. There is no magic bullet (a new Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t affect RT even if there are more things that the FCC probably could be doing), and there are good reasons not to get the feds involved in somehow deciding what is true, but we’re not helpless.
Repost – DW – YouTube Germany takes down RT’s channel for COVID misinformation.
More, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anoniminous: Yes, this, Brazil certianally decided vaccines are a wonderful thing after a year of death and misery.
Anoniminous
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Not surprising people whose entire knowledge of 21st Century Science consists of: Me put seed in ground, do ju-ju, plant GROW!, regards Reality-Based governance as “turning on them.”
Mike in NC
The rural county we live in publishes a weekly newspaper that consistently prints Letters to the Editor submitted by drooling wingnut assholes. One I just read was a racist diatribe by an alleged ‘pastor’ of something called the “Church of Living Water”. I need to look that up just for a good laugh.
kindness
Evangelical Xtians and Republicans in general both sure do love them some persecution fantasies. I don’t get it. Why do they think they’d be better Xtians/citizens of they were thrown to the lions in the Colliseum? Except that is exactly it. They need to feel superior to others and they think their made up/fantasy tormenting gives them that right. Evangelicals have always seemed to me to be the least Jesusy (as in following his preaching) of all the Xtian groups yet they think they are the most pure.
Go figure.
Roger Moore
@dr. bloor:
It’s also incorrect. “Factual” means related to facts. Those statements are all factual because they can be confirmed or refuted by the facts. They are false, but something false is still factual. It’s only when you get into pure opinion, e.g. whether it’s a good idea to get the vaccine, that something ceases to be factual.
This is not just being pedantic; it’s a critical point. The news media has spent way too much time treating facts as if they’re opinions and subject to argument. They aren’t. That the hospitals are full of people because they’ve gotten the vaccine is a statement of fact. It is absolutely the news media’s job to determine what the facts are and to broadcast them, even if that means saying flatly that an important person is saying something untrue.
SamR
We go about this entirely wrong. After HCA was up and running for awhile, a surprising type of post started popping up: the Immunized to Prevent Awards, or IPAs. Basically, people showing vax cards with extremely recent dates, and attributing their changed minds to HCA. Which no one would have predicted as an outcome of that subreddit, but it turns out repeatedly seeing people who think like you think get sick and die, and then have others laugh at them, actually motivates behavior change.
People think they’re being “tolerant” when they don’t react with disdain and derision to anti-vaxxers, but its actually indulgence. Stop indulging these idiots.
SiubhanDuinne
Just had one of those moments where, from out of nowhere, I was suddenly struck by something both blindingly obvious and supremely meaningless:
The title Padishah is a homophone of the classical ballet step pas de chat.
Ksmiami
@The Dangerman: live?
Roger Moore
@kindness:
The persecution complex is right there in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said it was righteous to be persecuted for being a Christian to the point it was a route into heaven. There are plenty of Christians who read that and decide they want to be persecuted, and if they can’t find some real persecution they’ll be more than happy to imagine some.
Ksmiami
@SamR: that was my point a few months ago- point and laugh and claim you’re happy there will be fewer gqp voters and eventually they’ll get the message
Delk
I miss road-trips.
Be safe!
Jess
@Another Scott: Yes, I saw that! It would be a sad irony if all the paranoid conspiracies about a World Government actually necessitated one to get control of all the crazy.
Jess
@Roger Moore: I think also it’s the way they explain their declining appeal to the younger generation. It’s not that they suck, but rather that they’re being shut down by malevolent forces. Of course, the more absurd and crazy they get, the more disdain they face, so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Jess
@Ksmiami: Maybe they’ll get the message about the vax, but they’ll still be denying climate change and other crucial stuff to own the libs.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
As much of a shock as this might be I am by far the most responsible of my siblings. So yes I had to make all the legal/medical decisions about the parents when they could no longer do that. I’m old enough that the parents and all the aunts and uncles are passed, some of their prodigy have also passed. When you get to be a certain age, the responsibility and the decisions get to be a part of life. And we didn’t have to deal with a pandemic with any realistic response stymied by irresponsible lunatics.
Ksmiami
@Jess: the property insurers will take care of this at least in Florida
Baud
@Jess:
Whatever happened to “The Constitution is not a suicide pact”? The right used to love to beat the left over the head with that one.
Dan B
@SamR: Stop indulging anti-vaxxers and RWNJ’s is an excellent frame.
Barbara
There is nothing complex going on here. ISTM that in every human endeavor you can divide people into “Evangelists” (I love something and I want you to love it too!) and “Presbyterians” (there are only a few people, the elect, who are enlightened enough to understand what is good and meritorious). These people are in the latter category and they have decided “we” are on the wrong side of whatever divide divides us, defining “we” in ways that seem calculated to highlight differences in race, religion, education and probably class.
They think the social contract runs in only one direction, theirs, they don’t want others however defined to have what they have, and they don’t think others are sufficiently enlightened to share with, let alone tell them what to do. They don’t t really want to be a part of a world that includes people not like them helping to define social policy or obligation. Refusing a vaccine is their way of demonstrating who they have been all along.
I am so over devoting mental energy to “understanding” people who hate me.
Cameron
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Truly, their depraved lust for community development and restorative justice would make Attila flinch.
OzarkHillbilly
Merriam-Webster:
I read that differently than you seem to.
Dan B
@Ksmiami: Which part of Florida, and many other states, is not waterfront now or soon enough? I still believe the issue will be failure of agriculture from frightening weather disasters. But sea level will be an increasing issue.
Benw
There was not a doubt in my mind that when the vaccine became easily available even the people bitching about it would privately go get it and we’d get to 80-90%. I’m kinda shook.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
*Offer applies only to Conservatives.
Ruckus
@Jess:
We have limits on our freedom of speech, even as many think we don’t. The most common one is creating fear when there is no truth to the call for it – shouting fire in a theater when none exists is the common example. Another might be claiming that horse dewormer cures a disease it has zero to do anything with, like is 100% not a cure.
Ken
I found a couple of churches (or possibly “churches”) near me on Google Maps, when a flag showed up. “Wait,” I think, “that’s a residential neighborhood… and street view shows an ordinary house…” I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there was some property tax dodge involved.
James E Powell
The government didn’t turn on them; it became less supportive of their bigotry.
waspuppet
Not repeatedly or strongly enough, evidently.
West of the Rockies
Does anyone else find Sorry Antivaxxer to be just a bit too gleeful? I’m not sorry that there are fewer stupid, prideful Trumpians out there. I just don’t quite want to chortle about it. I think that diminishes me. Anyone else?
Ruckus
@kindness:
Humans who have no actual chances to be anything more than another body counted – which is the vast majority of us, often look for ways to be superior. They almost as often fail to find any way, which is why they got into that position in the first place. But evangelical religions do not revel in any kind of truth, most of them are a scam to enrichen someone because they want a big home, a jet, a following and have zero way to earn that in any way legitimately.
sab
@Ruckus: Or near rioting at school board public hearings?
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
Thing is, there’s a whole list of Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. They could go with the one right before it, “blessed are the peacemakers; God shall call them his sons.”
Christians have been genuinely persecuted for their faith in various times and places, and I expect the one you cite has given them great comfort in the face of those persecutions.
But if conservative Christians here in North America choose to hone in on the one about persecution when the most they suffer is (a) ridicule, and (b) not being allowed to inflict their moral code on others, that’s on them.
Not to mention, they should keep on reading, because in the very next verse, Jesus tells them to accept persecutions with gladness and exultation. I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing much of that from them.
JoyceH
@Benw:
I’m with you. It’s baffling. The earlier protests, to shutdowns, were understandable – people were losing money and losing their jobs and they wanted the economy back open and to go back to their favorite bar. But then they objected to masks, which would have made it possible for people to move about in public again. I think a lot of that can be attributed to Trump and his Mussolini imitation on the South Portico. But the vaccines are coming and THEN everything will be alright… except that it wasn’t. Since Trump’s whole pandemic response was to put everything on rapid vaccine development, I just don’t get it. This seemed to be coming up from the grass roots, not down from Dear Leader. I wish I knew how it happened, and why.
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: I haven’t researched it, but that’s my feeling as well.
I’m reminded of a quote, I think it was from Stephen Jay Gould (and/or Carl Sagan):
“Evolution is a theory, but it is also a fact.”
In that framework, a fact means something true. Maybe philosophers use the word diffrently?
Cheers,
Scott.
prufrock
My oldest friend’s wife, who is a nurse at a long term care facility and a rabid Trumper has run the gamut. She was eagerly one of the early recipients of the Pfizer vaccine, and posted her vaccine card on social media with a “Thank you President Trump!” chaser. Now she denounces vaccine mandates, doubts the vaccine’s efficacy (she posts FUD about it every day), and I’m sure she would refuse vaccination if she already didn’t have it. As a fifty something who smokes, she would absolutely be a candidate for a HCA otherwise. It’s utterly bizarre and depressing.
John Revolta
@Adam C: The Gubmint has turned on them time and time again by treating other groups and even other religions the same way it treated THEM! Foul betrayers!
catclub
@Dan B:
 
I fear the collapse of the ocean ecosystems to jellyfish and algae.
Carrying capacity of the world biome will be dramatically reduced.
This will happen just as we are getting a handle on global climate change. haha
cain
@catothedog:
Lead by a social media anti-christ.
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Scott: M-W also says this:
catclub
@JoyceH:
yep, grassroots == russian troll farms. The booing at a dear leader rally, when Trump said he got that vaccine and they should too, was the new reality.
PrairieLogic
@mistermix:
Just curious, where in Dakota’s did you and your wife come from? I’m from north central ND along the Canadian border north of Minot.
Just got back last week from helping for a bit at the farm for harvest. Caught a cold for the first time since the start of COVID, but luckily both the rapid and PCR tests came back negative. Since returning, I’ve heard several in our small community have come down with COVID; it’s heating up out there for sure.
Our family is blue and vaccinated; they say you need to now consider everyone a Trumper unless they prove otherwise. I’ve jokingly begun calling ND Afghanistan – a place far away and simply a disaster.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: Is that Popehat screaming I hear in the distance??
;-)
It’s a good read.
Cheers,
Scott.
John Revolta
@JoyceH: This seemed to be coming up from the grass roots, not down from Dear Leader. I wish I knew how it happened, and why.
catothedog’s linked article at #7 above may hold some kind of clue (it goes without saying that all this applies not only to Christian pages):
Ruckus
@sab:
Sure. I’d be more inclined to say no, if the thing they are shouting about not having to do will likely kill children, or at least possibly maim them for a long time. No one discussed about not getting the polio vaccine when it came out because many of us knew people with polio and how much it screws up your life, even if it doesn’t kill you. I don’t see Covid as being any different than polio was when I was a kid. Sure I’d bet there were some who couldn’t be convinced to get a vaccine, but no one I knew or even still no refused. Because we could see the the effects right in front of our noses. Now we have so much media just shouting bullshit for the eyeballs and money. Or at the very least not being truthful about it. They really shouldn’t have the right to say anything just because they have money.
Another Scott
@Jess: It looks like it’s platform-wide, not just Germany.
https://reut.rs/3ih57uP
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
I think I’m safe in that while he is a lawyer, well versed in the subject, I am just a subject of that law. And while he does shorten things on twitter he does write legally very well and even better when he does the long form, proper legal reasoning. While I’m not sure he’d want the job of SC justice, he’d make a damn sight better justice than anyone in the current majority of SC justices.
I’ve read popehat a lot, primarily because he’s good and because he writes well. I seem to remember reading what you linked some time ago, but the use of fire in a theater is still decent common usage, people understand it.
Kent
Those rural Mennonites are my people. Both my parents grew up in rural Mennonite farm families in PA and OR. And we have extended relatives across the border in Canada. A generation or two ago, Mennonites were basically your decent hardworking rural folks who rarely messed much in politics and were mostly concerned with pacifism when it came to interactions with the government.
But in the past several decades, the whole world of right wing evangelicalism has completely penetrated and taken over their minds. Starting decades ago with Focus on the Family and the Moral Majority and all that bullshit which started to penetrate via magazines and news shows. But now much more viciously through social media. To the point that rural Mennonites are really not much different from any other hard-core conservative evangelicals, at least when it comes to social issues and politics. When I was a kid, pacifism and issues of war and peace like nuclear disarmament were the universal issues and people were mostly agnostic about culture war issues like abortion. Today it is completely the opposite. The are all hard-core culture warriors on things like abortion, vaccines, and even CRT even though few of them even know black people. But they are agnostic on issues of war and peace.
Honestly fuck all of them. I can’t talk to half my relatives anymore. At least not on any topics other than perhaps sports. Their brains are all rotted by Trumpism and the GOP-Evangelical complex.
JaySinWa
Paging @popehat: https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/
We need a better understanding of free speech protections and better precedents to combat the current round of disinformation. The Holmes quote isn’t that
ETA I see @Another Scott: beat me to it and you have already responded. Just to add another common expression to the mix “Be careful what you wish for”
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruckus: um…”some of their progeny“…?
Not to jump on your case, fellow auld phart…but there’s a passle of Jackals who luuuuvs them some boyhowdy-are-yinz-stoopid pointing-&-mocking whenever someone on the other side of the isle ;^p says, how shall I put it, unfortunately misapprehended things (e.g., Louie Gohmert casting his asparagus).
Maybe we all should recognize that they aren’t alone in this, & take a couple of bites from the same humble pie we dish out to them. Y’think mebbe? :^D
Major Major Major Major
Oh are we doing free speech again? Make sure your new laws about “misinformation” don’t put somebody like trump in charge of determining what’s true. Also check to see if more censorious countries (most of them) are having the same problem, and ask yourself whether more restrictions would help here when they haven’t there.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think the core is that there are more information channels than just Trump and company. People interested in spreading misinformation have figured out that it benefits them to latch onto groups like the Trumpers that are primed to listen to them. They spread the Trumpers’ misinformation to gain credibility and then add their own misinformation once they’ve convinced people to listen to them. It’s something they’ve been doing more generally for a long time, but apparently the Trumpers are an especially good group to latch onto, and the pandemic has made people more prone to listen to them.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@PrairieLogic: North Central SD. I have family in Minot. If you’re not aware, the New Yorker did a story on Ward County (Minot is county seat).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/inside-the-worst-hit-county-in-the-worst-hit-state-in-the-worst-hit-country
eclare
@prufrock: What is FUD?
Roger Moore
@eclare:
Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. The name comes originally from IBM, but I assume the basic strategy is much older. As IBM practiced it, the idea was to convince people that going with anyone but the industry leader (IBM, naturally) was dangerous because nobody else could be counted on to have the best technology and to be around for the long haul. Sure the other guy might look good, but do you really want to build your company around a business partner who might be out of business themselves in a few years?
The term has now been expanded to mean any similar strategy. A good example in politics is the way the Republicans try to make everyone deal with them even when they’re out of power. After all, do you really want to be on their bad side the next time they take control again?
Dakota Expat
Late to this. Godspeed on trip to Dakotas. Know what it is to have at least one aging parent in that thinly settled, austerely beautiful place (I’ll be traveling there to see one, my Mom as it happens, 90+, real soon). Best to your wife and family.
Dakota Expat
BTW, if you’re heading to Minot, somehow find yourself stranded in Bismarck on the way (or on return), and want a really nice place to eat (above average prices for region) you might find the Pirogue Grill in downtown B worth checking out. Might overhear crazed political discussions there (lots of ND leg people hanging out there) and food is lovely northern plains good, urban elite stylish. Take my Mom there whenever I visit (my brothers, all five of them, do too). She loves the exposure to the elites, while remaining inscrutable about her conversion from Republicanism to disgust at Trumpian psychopaths.
Dakota Expat
@PrairieLogic: so good to see others in the diaspora reading BJ. Figured as much! Onward!
NorthLeft12
My Mom was born and raised in northern Saskatchewan and moved to Ontario in the early fifties. I have a lot of family in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and some in Manitoba too.
They are mostly very good people but there is this ongoing sense of aggrievement that they are being unfairly treated by the rest of Canada. It does not matter who is running the country, although they are a little less prickly when we are governed by conservatives, they always complain.
I did not expect that attitude to carry over wrt vaccinations and obeying/implementing COVID-19 precautions. Hard to believe that the man who was voted the greatest Canadian (Tommy Douglas, the father of our health care system) spent his entire life in Saskatchewan. They would not give him the time of day today.
HinTN
@Dan B: As long as taxpayers bail those rich MOFOs out, nobody gonna change.
HinTN
@lowtechcyclist: These are the same people who find their homophobia supported in Leviticus but ignore all the other prohibitions they don’t like.
HinTN
@Another Scott: Kavanaugh hasn’t the gray matter to follow that argument and neither does Bony Carrot. Thomas and Gorsuch? meh. I think Roberts just doesn’t care sent more and Alito’s a one track fascist.
HinTN
Ok, I’m just here by myself. Bubye
PrairieLogic
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Yes… saw that article. Stay safe in your travels.
Ruckus
@Uncle Cosmo:
Some of their progeny are people I’m related to and in this case the same generation. I’m the third oldest of the progeny of my parents and their siblings. At least 2 of them are dead. Some of us are a bit out of touch as we’ve moved around a lot so I’m not sure who all are still with us.
So really I’m not sure what you are talking about.
steve g
@SamR: Reddit has high credibility with people, because they are honest. People know that reddit would be doing the same thing to vaccinated people if vaccines were the problem. You can’t say that about too many news organizations these days.