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Media

Small Maybe Victory

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I guess this is how you get Zuckerberg’s attention:

Facebook is changing a number of policies relating to hate speech and voter suppression on the platform, the chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg, said in a surprise live video on Friday.

The announcements were made in a hurried appearance by the executive on his personal Facebook page shortly after Unilever announced that it was pulling advertisements for the next six months – which sent Facebook stock tumbling more than 7%.

More than 100 brands have joined a boycott of advertising on Facebook due to its failure to address hate speech and violence on the platform – most recently the major advertisers Verizon and Unilever.

Facebook will now take on an approach similar to that of Twitter, labeling posts that may violate its policies but are allowed to remain on the platform because they are deemed newsworthy.

The platform will also include a link to its voting information center on any post with information about voting, including by politicians: “This is not a judgement of whether the posts themselves are accurate,” Zuckerberg said.

I’m sure they’ll backslide, and it’s a pathetic little concession, but it ain’t nothing. I’m also enjoying the pants pissing atmospherics of the rushed announcement — it sure looks like Zuck thought he could ride this one out, until he couldn’t.

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It is known.

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Whenever I’m tempted to feel sorry for myself for having sundry druncles and Trumpy uncles (Venn diagram not a perfect circle, but close) mulching up the family tree, I pity folks like Mary Trump instead. The daughter of Fred Jr., Mary has a much worse uncle than any of us: the beast himself.

According to The Daily Beast (which has lived up to its name for three years and change), Mary Trump was The New York Times’ secret source for its explosive 2018 story that confirmed suspicions that the Trumps are multi-generational tax cheats. That story didn’t get nearly enough traction with the public, IMO. I don’t remember exactly what brand of fuckery was afoot in October 2018 when the story broke, but like the innumerable other Trump scandals that would have brought down any normal president, the Trumps’ theft of hundreds of millions of dollars just went by the boards like a common tan suit.

Anyhoo, Mary Trump is writing a tell-all that is scheduled to come out in August, right before the Republican National Convention and Virus Swap Meet.

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A Baquet of Kiss My Ass

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It’s difficult to know the right way to respond to an institution like the New York Times, which is clearly far beyond its sell-by date and starting to stink the place up.

On the one hand, their constant both-siderism and willingness to to publish the deep thoughts of fascists in a time when fascism is a real threat to the country has been obvious for years. The DC bureau has been fucked since forever, and it employs a courtier as one of their main White House correspondents. Their defensiveness and regularly demonstrated inability to course correct shows that you’ll be sadly disappointed expecting change from them.

On the other hand, a lot of people still read them, and they’re still influential, especially when most other media outlets have been decimated by budget cuts. Once in a while they break real news, not just a Maggie Haberman “scoop” of something that will be announced by the White House ten minutes later.

The way I deal with the NYT is by not reading it as much as possible, not linking to it here, trying to avoid embedding tweets from reporters there (but I’ve done it recently) and basically linking to other outlets like the Post and the Guardian. When they fuck up royally, as they did yesterday by thinking that Tom Cotton’s op-ed should be translated into English rather than published in the native German, just say, in the words of Aimee Mann, “That’s Just What You Are,” and move on. Because there’s no way to make that fucking paper’s needle jump the groove. They aren’t going to change, so it’s up to you to change the way you look at them.

Of course, there’s one obvious right thing to do: unsubscribe if you still give them money.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: One Step At A Time

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… Twitter’s policy of adding a warning to, rather than deleting, tweets that break its rules when it comes to major public figures was announced in mid-2019. But the social network has never used it on Mr Trump – nor deleted any of his tweets before.

The same post remains unaltered on Facebook, without any warning attached…

The move means that other users will not be able to like, reply, or retweet it, Twitter said – but would still be able to retweet with a comment attached.

In a Twitter thread, the social network said: “This tweet violates our policies regarding the glorification of violence based on the historical context of the last line, its connection to violence, and the risk it could inspire similar actions today.”

The “historical context” is a reference to the late 1960s, when the phrase “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” was coined by Miami Police Chief Walter Headley, in reference to his aggressive policing policies in black neighbourhoods…

“We’ve taken action in the interest of preventing others from being inspired to commit violent acts, but have kept the tweet on Twitter because it is important that the public still be able to see the tweet given its relevance to ongoing matters of public importance.”…

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Late Night Open Thread: World’s Most Powerful Twitter Troll

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Watching the Creation of Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By

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Last night ABC News’ Sasha Pezenik reported by twitter thread on a new allegation against Vice President Biden. This reporting included the actual debunking of the claim, but Pezenik led with the bogus, fabricated allegation in the first couple of tweets before getting to the actual facts that conclusively demonstrated that the allegations were bogus in the subsequent tweets in the thread. Buried lede by twitter thread. Here’s the factual debunking tweets:

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By

And here’s what she has pinned to the top of her page now:

Leaving aside ABC news vetting and standards for reporting, the real problem was that she had the debunking in her reporting, she just buried it beneath a false, but new, scandalous accusation of Vice President Biden’s being sexually inappropriate around and with women. The allegations were pushed to Pezenik by Christine O’Donnell, yes the “I am not a witch” Christine O’Donnell and it involved VP Biden and her niece. As Pezenik’s own reporting, cut and pasted above demonstrates, IT NEVER HAPPENED!!!! O’Donnell is tap dancing on her Facebook page over this as fast as she can, but whatever she thought she was going to achieve for herself by promoting this, she hasn’t.

What she has done, however, with a helpful assist of Pezenik, is get the allegation out there. And that’s all that really matters in the influence operation against Vice President Biden. Tulsi Gabbard’s former deputy policy coordinator amplified it, which brought it to the attention of Rich McHugh, who broke the story of Lynda LaCasse coming forward to provide corroboration for Tara Reade. Corroboration that now appears to have been coached by Reade.

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 1 Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 2 Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 3

McHugh is also pushing for the University of Delaware archive of Vice President Biden’s personal senatorial papers be opened and accessed immediately. Which, as I explained the other night, will not actually provide any clarity to any of these issues because any personnel documents would be filed with what is now the Senate personnel office because staffers in the House and the Senate officially work for the House or the Senate, not the representative or senator they work for day to day.

It was also, of course, picked up and flogged by Ryan Grim and others who have been pushing Tara Reade’s constantly evolving and adapting allegations.

Watching Anti-Biden Misinformation & Agitprop In Real Time: All Lines Are Open, All Reporters Are Standing By 4

Allegations that have always been impossible to verify and substantiate because there is no time, day, and/or date to her allegations, nor was there ever an actual complaint filed.

What is really going on here, and it is going to accelerate and grow until or unless reporters, editors, and producers get their acts together, is a two pronged influence operation. The first part is to get misinformation about Vice President Biden out into the mainstream media as quickly as possible, Because once it is reported on, no matter how quick the debunking is, the misinformation will be seized on and promoted, while the debunking will, at best, get pointed to by people like me. Pezenik had a legit news story to break last night, but it wasn’t the story she broke. She even had all the pieces to break the real news, which was “failed Delaware Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is attempting to smear Vice President Biden with a false allegation, which we were able to debunk with two phone calls. We are continuing our investigation in an attempt to learn why O’Donnell is doing this.” That framing would have allowed Pezenik and ABC News to break the story last night. But that isn’t what they did. O’Donnell and whoever put O’Donnell up to this knows that reporters have a sweet tooth for this type of thing. And they also know that if they can get the allegation out there through a legitimate news source, they will have laundered the misinformation successfully because almost no one they’re trying to message to is going to pay attention to the debunking.

The second part of this influence operation is agitprop. It is to further the President’s, the Republican Party’s, the conservative movement’s, Fox News’s, prominent Republicans’, conservatives’, and their surrogates’ argument that the real and legitimate news sources in the US are actually fake. That they cannot be trusted to report accurately or fairly. It is to create cognitive dissonance where the false and debunked in real time accusations against Vice President Biden are accepted as true, while at the same time the argument that the news media is lying to everyone and can’t be trusted because they botched the story by reporting factually wrong information is reinforced. It is a have your cake and eat it too influence operation. It is also, exactly, what Putin has been trying to do within Russia, within the US, and around the world for well over a decade. It is the attempt to create the dynamic where because nothing is true anything and everything is possible.

Open thread!

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After Almost Twelve Hours…

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The New York Times decides that there are not two sides on injecting bleach.

The difficult thing about the Times is that they actually do a good job – even an excellent job – on a lot of things. Like this:

How New Mexico, One of the Poorest States, Averted a Steep Death Toll

Open Thread!

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Opinions Differ

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Here’s how a real newspaper writes a headline: Trump asked if disinfectants could be injected to kill the coronavirus inside the body. Doctors answered: ‘People will die.’ See how they did that? First, they quote him accurately (he talked about injecting disinfectant — how fucking dumb do you have to be to think that Lysol in the vein is a solution to anything but your continued presence on the planet?) Second, when the preponderance of Doctors say that something will kill you, it’s OK to write “this will kill you”, even if Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil and Dr. Dolittle disagree.

It’s 8 AM on a Friday, and I’m already feeling like there’s not enough gin in the fucking world.

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GOP Insanity Open Thread: Has the Mad King Finally Lost His Audience?

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He’ll never lose the shriveled, paranoid hearts of his Base — he could announce that he was going to divorce Melania for Lindsay Graham and cede his Oval Office throne to Hillary Clinton, and after a few confused moments they’d agree that it must be a subtle ploy to unmask the hated Democrats.

But Trump’s second line of defense, the Media Village Idiots paid by their oligarchic masters to publicly uphold Lord Smallgloves as the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being ever to occupy the White House, just might be beginning to have some doubts… at least about Trump’s ability to keep fooling a near-majority of the voters.

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No Joseph Welch Moment

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Betty wrote about Jay Rosen’s new essay at his site PressThink, where he recommends that editors should change the way their media outlets cover Trump since he spreads so much misinformation. Last night, Rosen posted this lengthy Twitter thread to address the question of whether reporters should do a better job questioning Trump at press conferences. Read the whole thing, but he makes a couple of good points:

  • If you question Trump about a falsehood, he spins off more lies as he answers your question, so the lies grow exponentially. So the notion that good, hard questions will make any difference is wrong.
  • There will be no moment where some reporter asks (as Joseph Welch did at the Army/McCarthy hearings) “have you no sense of decency” and Trump crumbles. We need to stop looking for that.

Again, read the whole thing. Trump is about to hold another press conference, and I’m sure things will come out of his piehole, but I think Rosen’s proposal to scale coverage of those press conferences way back and summarize what can be verified is what we need to do right now. I also think Paul Campos is right to say that a “semi-normal, minimally functional human being” as President could look like Churchill in the next few months, since we’re all just looking for a little honest leadership, but Trump doesn’t even have the ability to live up to that incredibly low standard.

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Emergency Journalism

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NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen is one of the sharpest media critics we have. He published a piece at PressThink yesterday that should be printed out and nailed to the door of every media outlet in the country, in my opinion. Here’s a link to the piece, which I urge you to read in its entirety.

It’s in the form of an editor’s note that every media outlet should publish and abide by in this emergency situation. The emergency Rosen addresses isn’t the pandemic. It’s the fact that the chief source of dangerous lies about the virus is the president of the United States.

Rosen argues that it is therefore not just irresponsible but deadly to the citizens journalists are supposed to inform to amplify Trump’s constant stream of self-serving lies. He’s right. Here’s an excerpt:

Even this far into his term, it is still a bit of a shock to be reminded that the single most potent force for misinforming the American public is the current president of the United States. For three years this has been a massive — and unsolved — problem for the country and its political leadership. 

But now it is life and death. On everything that involves the coronavirus crisis Donald Trump’s public statements have been unreliable. And that is why today we announce that we are shifting our coverage of the President to an emergency setting…

Refusing to go with live coverage. Suspending normal relations with his White House. Always asking: is this something we should amplify? A focus on what he’s doing, not on what he’s saying. The truth sandwich when we feel we have to highlight his false claims. This is what you can expect now that our coverage has been switched to an emergency setting. 

Media organizations almost certainly won’t take Rosen up on this proposal. Most have failed in critical ways to adjust their coverage to accommodate a pathological liar in the White House, and even the outlets I consider mostly good on the Trump beat fuck up on a maddeningly routine basis. But Rosen is absolutely correct: this is an emergency, and lives are at stake.

A hollow man with a howling void where his soul should be, Trump used to feed off the energy of his hate rallies, ginning up anger with lies and then sucking up the rage and adulation like a narcissistic vampire. That avenue is foreclosed to him now, and I think he’s found a substitute with these daily briefings.

He lies constantly at the briefings about really important shit like the availability of ventilators and protection equipment and the progress toward treatments and vaccines. The networks carry it live, and it may be working:

I don’t think that number will hold up once the death toll rises and the enormity of the gap between what Trump says and what transpires becomes undeniable to all but the cultists, but it’s alarming. Trump has bungled this crisis, loudly and in public, over and over.

Mainstream media outlets are pointing out that Trump has changed his tune on the virus, and that’s a good thing. But they must stop letting him lie on live TV and amplifying the false statements in headlines, alerts and tweets — or more people will die. Like Rosen said, this is an emergency, and it requires new rules.

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Can’t We Just Fire Them For Being Bad?

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Today, the sun rose in the East. The other night, just as predictably, Bill Maher opened his mouth and something stupid came out. You can follow that link for details. The short story is that he defended “his friend” Chris Matthews and doesn’t think Matthews should be fired for what most of us (not Maher) would call sexual harassment.

Of course Chris Matthews should have been fired for that, but he should have been fired long ago for his moronic remarks, as well as just his general entitled laziness.

I’m going to guess that Maher has a harassment skeleton or two in his closet. He reeks of creep. But even if he doesn’t, he’s terrible. He’s not funny, a lot of his guests suck, and he thinks his sexist hot takes are somehow edgy when they’re just misogynistic. Can’t he just be fired for that? Does the ability to eke out halfway decent ratings on a cable show mean that he’s got a lifelong appointment (as Matthews seemed to have until he was finally canned)?

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Chris Matthews Taps Out

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About 45 minutes or so ago, depending on when I hit post, Chris Matthews has retired from MSNBC.

It was so abrupt and sudden and, apparently, unexpected that when they came back from commercial, Chris Kornacki was sitting in front of the camera, looking like he was going to cry, and clearly at a loss for words. He took the show immediately back to another commercial so they could figure out what to do for the rest of the hour.

A lot of people are going to start to opine that Matthews was forced out because of his confusing Jamie Harrison who is running to unseat Senator Graham in South Carolina for Senator Scott, who is the junior senator from South Carolina. Or that his comparing Senator Sanders’ victory in the Nevada caucus to Hitler’s invasion and subsequent occupation of France by going around the gap in the Maginot Line. But the reality is that Laura Bassett’s courage was the coup de grâce.

At the end of last week, Bassett wrote an article and got it published that specifically recounted how Matthews had sexually harassed her on multiple occasions when she was booked on Hardball as a commenter. The safe play for Bassett was to continue to not publicly discuss it, even as many people knew that something had happened according to her recounting events in her article based on an earlier article about a not named cable news host who had harassed her.

Here is Bassett’s response to his resignation:

And here response to his on air apology that was not specifically addressed to her:

Open thread.

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Contest ends…

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Not THAT one: I mean the competition for the  dumbest fucking tweet in the history of blue check marks:

Contest ends...What the goddamn fucking hell? As if any “liberal” outside Haberman’s mama’s PR shop target audience “persona” flipbook ever thought Ivanka Trump was anything other than a vapid shart-stain on the seat of her odious wretch of a father’s ill-fitting golf pants.

She registered as a Republican NOW because she was too stupid to realize she had to change her registration in time to vote for Velveeta Voldemort during the 2016 primary.

And of fucking course she defends Trump on impeachment and goes on Sean Hannity; the entire pack of ravening grift-mavens has moved on from ripping off contractors and defrauding consumers because they managed to sink their sharp and greedy claws into the US Treasury and aren’t eager to have that or their lucrative foreign government shake-down action foreclosed.

Funny how the country’s mightiest metropolitan daily manages to employ such a credulous hack, unable to spot crude cons that wouldn’t get past an elementary school paper. Why it’s almost as if…

Anyhoo. Christ on a crumpet. This makes me want to subscribe just so I can cancel the NYT again.

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More Reasons To Ignore Nate Silver

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Some of you may have noticed that Nate Silver has become an insufferable bad-hot-take machine, obsessed with driving clicks by talking about the hour-by-hour minutiae of his team’s forecast models. We now have published scholarly evidence that this may be bad for democracy.

In a very robust-sounding paper*, which I admittedly have not read in its entirety, researchers suggest that:

an increase of 20% over even odds in this study lowered voting by 3.4%, and an advantage of 40% [around what Clinton had in the 538 2016 forecast] lowered the voting by 6.9%. If as the evidence provided above suggests, Democrats were more affected [than Republicans]…, probabilistic forecasts may have a strong enough effect on turnout to constitute an important factor influencing the election.

Similar to the observer effect in physics, where you change the result by measuring it, the widespread consumption of these forecasts may well undermine the very things they seek to report. Importantly, this effect was not seen in research subjects who were only shown poll results.

Here’s a good thread on the paper!

When a draft of the paper was published in 2018, Nate Silver dedicated an entire episode of his podcast to “rebutting” it. You can see the rebuttal of the rebuttal here. I’m inclined to believe the authors, for Nate Silver has become a terrible hack. Apparently he was more recently urging scholarly journals not to publish this piece, which is super classy.

Open thread!

*This link is to last year’s draft of the paper; the paper itself was published this month, and is behind a paywall.

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