#sclmb

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Since 2005, more than 3,300 newspapers have closed.²⁶ Fifty-five million Americans now live in news deserts with no local coverage at all.²⁶ Into that vacuum rushed 1,200 websites designed to look like local news while producing partisan content at industrial scale.²⁷ That number now matches the total count of real daily newspapers still operating in America.

Eight Men Control What 40% of Americans Believe

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Articles focused on either or both Biden's or Trump's age or mental acuities

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Jen Sorensen

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Genocide Doesn’t Happen Without Language to Incite It

US establishment media seemed unwilling or unable (but likely both) to narrate a more complex, historically accurate account of the war on Gaza.

The Intercept (4/15/24) reported that editorial directives at the New York Times and CNN, two of the most important news sources in the US, advised reporters to avoid certain “taboo” words, such as “genocide” and “massacre.” Yet between October 7 and November 24, 2023, the Times used the word “massacre” 53 times—referring to Israelis killed by Palestinians, but only once to refer to a Palestinian killed by Israel (Intercept, 1/9/24).

From November onward, as deaths in Gaza piled up, the Times habitually avoided using emotionally fraught terms for Palestinians. Another term, “ethnic cleansing,” was also barred from use, along with “refugee camps” and “occupied territories.”

As the Times source who leaked the directives said, “You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict.”

US news outlets were crippled by these verbal restrictions, incapable of offering an accurate explanation of what was happening in Gaza by imposing such constraints on humanitarian language, and international principles and laws.

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We know more about Biden's prostate than we do about what private information Trump's 19-year-old DOGE agents took from the Social Security Administration and the IRS.

Stonekettle

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The New York Times, in a page out of Orwell, sent an internal memo telling reporters and editors to eschew the terms “refugee camps, “occupied territory,” “ethnic cleansing” and, of course, “genocide” when writing about Gaza. Those who name and denounce this evil are smeared, blacklisted and purged from university campuses and the public sphere. They are arrested and deported. A deadening silence is descending upon us, the silence of all authoritarian states. Fail to do your duty, fail to cheerlead the war on Iran, and see your broadcasting license revoked, as the Chair of the F.C.C. Brendan Carr has proposed.

Chris Hedges

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Why did the mainstream media wind up obsessed with Joe Biden’s age but not Donald Trump’s?

Real Media Bias and the Case of Biden-Is-Old

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But why is the New York Times, riding high economically, so visibly favoring Trumpism in its headlines and framing devices? Why are television networks and media companies paying off lawsuits they’d undoubtedly win in a way that exposes them to enormous future liabilities, or in the case of Disney, taking hasty actions which undoubtedly cost them a lot of subscription revenue? Why are some companies moving into sympathetic alignment with Trumpism’s “culture war” positions despite the fact that other previous commitments have been economically positive for them, while their new loyalties are costing them business? And of course, most infuriatingly of all, why have most national elected officials of the Democratic Party retreated into silence, evasion or failed reprisals of politics-as-usual in an environment where their careers and even lives are at risk if they can’t forcibly resist Trumpist power?

The News: Reign of Error