That's pretty dope. It's almost like he's teaching kids, and by extension the general public through these "secret" video recordings, how easy it is to become radicalized.
Like people complain about Antifa and the Taliban and blah blah blah but nobody stops to realize that this is a control tool every country (yes folks, even the U.S.!) uses to massively brainwash and turn groups of people against a centralized enemy. Hell, look at undecided voters. That's literally a glaring, albeit more subtle, example of modern radicalism on a scale hardly anyone notices.
Then you have the media that constantly spews out misinformation or, even if they get it right more often than not, they pack a bunch of random pictures and videos and news articles together meant to have the average viewer create connections where none were meant to be. It's like continuously showing Indians (from India) subsequently preceding 7/11 ads and shit and now everyone automatically associates the two together.
In this day and age it pays to get information from multiple perspectives. One perspective preaches bias, multiple perspectives and general apathy is about as close as someone can get to a truly unbiased news source
Lets talk about media a little. Taking newspapers as an example.
Every paper has an "editorial line" - best example I ever came across to illustrate it is a NYT job ad for their new moscow bureau chief - that read as following:
Vladimir Putin’s Russia remains one of the biggest stories in the world.
It sends out hit squads armed with nerve agents against its enemies, most recently the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. It has its cyber agents sow chaos and disharmony in the West to tarnish its democratic systems, while promoting its faux version of democracy. It has deployed private military contractors around the globe to secretly spread its influence. At home, its hospitals are filling up fast with Covid patients as its president hides out in his villa.
If that sounds like a place you want to cover, […]
That comes partly from the editorial desk, and partly from company culture. And it is self-perpetuating. People read the paper, people take jobinterviews with that paper knowing what it stands for, people get selected in job interviews based on if they'd fit in with the team, team arround you has a certain view in you daily working life -- what results is basically an ecosystem. So no one is necessarily giving those out as rules, but everyone knows what a paper stands for and 'self adjusts'.
Then there is financiers or sponsors of a paper -- especially important if there is no more money to be made in news (because facebook and craigslist got all them moneys), because the editorial staff becomes more reliant on money from the outside. And especially importent in the US, as you dont have publicly financed media outlets anymore (aside from maybe NPR). That usually (best case scenario..
) comes into play as "red lines", so stuff where you'd selfcensor, or could be fairly certain, that the owner/board wouldnt me happy to have it published.
Then there is "access", best explained on "government access", where papers get fed exclusives from PR people, if they can be fairly certain that the reporting will be positive, and with plenty of "good will". This is also self enforcing, because its a benefit for both the PR folks and the paper. And even if you arent hooked on exclusives, if you are a part of the (f.e. capitol hill) scene, this also influences your perception of topics after a while.
Then there is "national security", which can be invoked, to halt a certain article from being published, but afaik this would be in the hands of the owners of a paper, if they adhere to it or not.
Now, why am I writing this?
There is commentary and there is news. Commentary is basically written by "experts" the paper either sources depending on the topic, or has amongst its own staffers. Outside sources, get picked up more often, if you had them in the past - so over time this also creates a familiarity. Commentary, more often than not is "one of the issues of the day", as viewed through the "editorial line" lens of a paper. Its opinions, feelings, thoughts, everything thats not news, but context.
And then there is news. Which should be matter of fact, best practice - fact based, reporting. And usually is done in neutral language. (At least in newspapers, publishing daily. In weeklies - they usually still try to give context.).
Now to why I'm writing this. Journalism usually doesnt try to "create" themes, stories or impressions with the placement of news. The front page can be an exception. They dont try to "create connections" - where none are. As mentioned in the posting above.
Thats distinctly not what journalism does - and if it would do so, it would have ventured into PR work.
And journalism doesnt explain context over a longer period. So it doesnt tell you how stuff developed, or a more fully fledged context on things, outside of some topics that make it into commentary, and then commentary itself has no incentive to be thorough or all encompassing or..
Thats really on the reader. Or people who read and write books..
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In this entire configuration it imho is important to understand, that its almost impossible to claim, or demand "impartiality" in der interest of the user, because - basically its hard for people in groups to stay impartial, and some bias (even of the unconscious kind), always is expected.
Even with news, even if you try to verify stories using multiple sources, even in the best case scenario.
Thats why multiple perspectives and newspaper sources are so important. You literally cant get better informed by one source, and you cant demand "impartiality" - because on some level nothing is.
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Now lets get into why it might have gotten worse in the social media age.
- First, investigative reporting is expensive. So why should you pay for it, if people dont pay for news anymore - and noone has to look for stories anymore, you get them for free over blogs and twitter! Means investigative reporting is under risk of dying out. News outlets these days are usually bundling their departments on bigger investigative stories with the staff of other newsoutlets - in essence so it doesnt cost as much.
- Being first is more important than being correct. This is an attention economy thing in the digital age, that also has to do with "who gets the first link out, that can be shared" >> this is then the story that will get most clicks.
- "Veryfied by other newspaper sources" got highjacked by the blog economy. So blogs would provide sources, that less reputable rags would pick up, then a more reputable paper would take two of those, to verify that the story was correct (source could still have been the same blog), then more reputable papers would go with that news paper source, and so on and so forth... So PR Agencies pretty much had figured out how to "seed" certain stories a few years after facebook became mainstream.
- People being stuck in their facebook feeds for news consumption. Facebook algo doesnt select by "truth" or "quality" it selects by "popularity" and it self inforces - you on theories and stories and angles, that you like, because they are easier for you to parse, they give you better emotions, ... and then bubble.
News papers at least try to verify stories, and have other journalists near by people can talk with and ask questions and so on --- so any news outlet is better, than following the blogosphere, or whatever ends up in your facebook feed (where you dont click through and then dont know if it came from a marketing initiative or a news outlet).
Sidenote: Tucker is not news, and neither are your radio shockjocks. Thats commentary again - see above..
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Aside from that there are other biases, and stuff newsoutlets are prone to, from "what sells the paper" to "agenda setting" -- (thats the stuff gatekeepers do). Which come with their own problems.
But then what happened to public "informedness", once gatekeepers got eliminated, turned out to be the following. Everyone shared "horrorshow" an "scandal" and "you wouldnt believe" and "hate", "anger", "fear", about 100x as often as any other stuff.
Pretty much ending with Facebook having to play the gatekeeper role again, just this time algorithmically - and in very select cases (banning Trump, was the most high profile so far), and thats also far from ideal, which brings us back to..
Please actively look out news sources, see, that you get some from multiple (or at least "both") sides of the spectrum, to actually get a deeper understanding about stuff. Try to stay away from stuff that mainly tries to hook emotionally, and read commentary mostly for entertainment. (Panel discussions and so on, might or might not be different).
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And if you can, try to stay away from statements like "they mostly lie, and when they do not...", because most of the issues actually come from systemic problems that are pretty much impossible to get rid of -- and if journalism does try one thing, its pretty much - not to lie.
There are plenty incentives for them not to get caught in a lie also. But then - there also is framing, and depending on how strong the "partisan activism" (or the hand of the sponsor) of a paper is, you might end up on a couch on fox news and framing the entire news day -- but even then, thats usually done via commentary, and the newsdesk usually sends out more "neutrally" written stuff, even on Fox.
(Well, up until a point. Do you remember when Trump called Fox fake news and told you to watch Newsmax insted? And you all did? Rupert Murdock actually worried about his viewer numbers, fired part of the Fox news desk, and made sure, personally, that they got viewernumbers back -- which was not "journalistic" at all, But something of which the owner of the channel thought, it had to be done. Allegedly.)
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Influence as in "someone tells a journalist what to write", or "someone creates a page in a certain way, so connections are implied that arent there" usually isnt common at all. Partly because even as a paper owner you dont have to (people tend to write "in the style of a paper" on their own), partly, because you cant. (Newsschedule is now as close as possible to realtime, so even "designing the frontpage" has become less and less important).
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So how to influence best. Best influence method today is microtargeting, via (political) ads, and thats something that mostly gets "bought on" and facilitated via social media platforms. So if you break out of your facebook or twitter feed for news consumption -- you've almost done enough already to not have your opinion decided by those. Next step is to be aware that very impactful (usually negative) emotions (hate, anger, fear, loss...) are used to get certain messages to spread far faster and wider, than their rebuttals ever could. So try not to mainly fall for those, if possible. Look up puppy videos on youtube instead, they'll also do the trick.
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Most often sentiments like "the media lies" are driven by feelings that your own "perceived reality", doenst get featured in mainstream media anymore.
And that can have two causes. First - media is "too liberal" and doesnt tell "proper conservative truth", in which case - please still keep reading liberal media outlets, as well as "the new frontiersman", you conservative paper of choice. It will benefit you over time. But also the other way around. With a special case of that being, media f.e. being reluctant to report on crises, where a negative public perception would make them worse. (Migration crisis would be the classic example.)
Second - you have become an emo, and are only consuming fringe news, that usually give you the real fluffpieces, or horrorshow, or the russian perspective - exclusively. And while being an emo is totally fine and could score you the protagonist role in the next Square Enix game, in terms of news consumption, thats not ideal.
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End of textwall.
You can go now. Play a game, or something..
edIt: This is mostly a writeup for news ecosystems in western ("democratic") countries. If most of the media is stateowned in your country, and independent news outlets get shut down because "they be financed by the enemy" - the media ecosystem plays out much differently, of course.
