WaPo chaos

Washington Post used to be very influential and profitable. Jeff Bezos, who bought the newspaper in 2013, became aware of the fact that legacy media (including his newspaper) was losing ground. He said, "Americans Don't Trust the News Media."

He started taking bold steps to turn the paper around, probably hoping to hold off a loss in profit that would accompany the loss of trust. In 2024 he decided they would not endorse a presidential candidate (and lost 200,000 subscribers). In 2025 he told them to write about liberty and free markets (and an angry editor quit his job).

Bezos (photo) could not avoid or hold off staggering losses. The paper lost $77 million in 2023, $100 million in 2024, and another $100 million in 2025.

What business could swallow loss on that scale? Only a business owned by a billionaire who could absorb those losses, perhaps. Changes had to be made. 

Earlier this year he fired over 300 reporters, a massive 44% reduction . . and then another 60,000 online subscribers quit.

We're watching legacy media in free fall.

Only left

While out to lunch last Sunday, I picked up a newspaper and browsed through one section. Every headline assumed a single point of view, the left-leaning view. 

Minneapolis is wracked with conflict (image) right now, as you probably know. But a reader of the biggest Twin Cities' newspaper would never learn from the headlines I saw that there are other worthy interpretations of what's going on, that there are non-left decent people who have something to say.

Emotions are amplified. Additional facts and context to the stories don't get reported as they're discovered, because opinions and feelings are hardened. Stories or narrative get "crystallized before facts emerge." 

"Emotional polarization [is] amplified by ideological media driving radicalized behavior," according to this pollster. 

from Alpha News

(cont'd tomorrow)

Deepfake 2

Follow up to this post

"It used to be that we could believe videos of people saying or doing something, because the technology didn't exist to lie convincingly." Those days are so over. 

Would you believe that, by some estimates, at least half of new internet content is generated by artificial intelligence? That means it was written or created by AI at the command of a human giving a prompt. Casual viewers assume a human creator of this content and are easily deceived.

It's happening on Grok, the AI of X (old Twitter), and it makes people mad.  None of us want untrue videos, images or stories about ourselves circulating. 

How to stop it is the question. Grok is working on it: "We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis." Image creation and editing are only available to paid subscribers, so they can hold bad actors accountable. 

But we know that fake stuff on the internet will continue. How do we know what posts are true and which are fake? 

from Mind Matters

Google admits it

Google has been accused multiple times of suppressing political views they don't like, of favoring the left in their search algorithms. They always denied it. 

Back in 2018, CEO Sundar Pichai (photo) stressed that they operate without political bias.

As late as last October, he claimed Google's innocence for almost four hours before a congressional committee. He said they are as objective as possible.

Now . . everybody knows the accusations were correct and the denials were lies, because they've admitted it in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. The previous administration pressured them repeatedly, they say, to remove content from Youtube and they did it.

They admit it was "unacceptable and wrong," and they "will allow creators banned for political speech on COVID-19, elections, and related issues an opportunity to return to the platform."

Maybe they're sorry. Or . . maybe they're just complying to the "vibe shift" and they'll do it again as soon as it's convenient to do so.

Nuclear now 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Isabelle used to worry about the environment, but changed her mind to believing that humans can solve the problem. Now she's excited about becoming an "influencer" to promote nuclear power on social media (image) . . using her cool factor as a model.

Can she get the attention of other cultural influencers? Maybe so: actress Gwyneth Paltrow helped launch her new book (which came out last week), Rad Future, in The Hamptons. 

Isabelle created on online persona, Isodope. You can see her social media posts there and some of them here on Youtube.

Silicon Valley leaders are really interested in nuclear power, she says, because of AI. The connection is in tomorrow's post.

from "The Brazilian Model Who Wants America to Go Nuclear"

(cont'd tomorrow)

Dig for truth

Christians in America are waking up to a couple of modern facts: our views and our churches don't enjoy near-universal approval anymore, and we need to re-think our response to our culture in light of that.

Modern life is confusing. American culture has been disrupted by people who don't share our values. 

This journalist (below) is a Christian. He challenges both himself and the rest of us to be careful to tell the truth rather than just play for hits and likes on social media, to do things God's way rather than the selfish way. He challenges all of us to respond with restraint and kindness even when confronted with opposition and hate.

We 're all going to have to "dig for truth" in this environment. Think things through.

Burn cars≠fun

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you followed a link on yesterday's post, you heard an ABC reporter telling people what he thinks is happening at the riots in Los Angeles: "just a bunch of people having fun watching cars burning".

"Fun"?? This is from a used-to-be-trusted legacy media news outlet. To the degree that anyone agrees with this deluded view of a violent situation, we have a genuine crisis going on in this country.

NPR & PBS 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Public radio/TV must be non-partisan to qualify for government funds. So the question is, are we sure that the Corp. for Public Broadcasting (NPR & PBS) is biased in favor of the left? The NPR head testified before Congress on this question (photo).

 

You may remember that a veteran of NPR (25 years) became a whistleblower, even though he leaned left himself. In his article for The Free Press, he details several major stories in which NPR intentionally took the side of the progressive left without giving the opposing views any consideration.

Research shows that far more interviews and guests are from the left. In a four-month period, the non-left political party was referred to as "far right" or "hard right" extremists. No such terms were applied to the progressive left.

As one journalist used to say, "There's no such thing as neutrality in journalism. There's only transparency." 

NPR & PBS should transparently admit they are not neutral. They can continue their progressive leftist slant, but should give up demanding that taxpayers foot the bill.

 from "NPR and PBS Dug Their Own Graves"

NPR & PBS

News reporting and broadcasting should be "fair and balanced" in America, and that's what we look for. But of course there are journalists who think their own opinions are right and refuse to give coverage to other views. 

It's allowed in America, where we have protected free speech. But the other half of Americans, who see things differently, certainly should not be forced to pay for the broadcasting of opinions they believe to be wrong. That wouldn't be fair.

Those other Americans have been in this position for decades. Complaints that government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR and PBS) is biased go back to the 1960's. But moves to cut public funding were always de-railed by appealing to kids' programing like Big Bird and Mr. Rogers.

Times change. Under the current president, government funding -- provided by taxpayers -- may really end. CPB is shocked. They are suing.

(cont'd tomorrow)

New media 4

Follow up to post, post, post

Legacy ("old") media has lost the trust of many Americans, demonstrated by declining subscribers and declining influence. Some are trying to face that fact, to "right the ship," and to regain trust. Surging in the gap is "new media," including podcasts and X and independent videos/reports. 

For example, there were hundreds of authentic videos (like yesterday's) published on X of real conditions last fall after Hurricane Helene created chaos in western North Carolina.  They challenged some misleading legacy media reports in newspapers and on TV.

We learned not to trust "old" media's version of reality. Now there's an alternative that seems more trustworthy. As Konstantin Kisin says, "what could go wrong?"

Hopefully, new media will prove more reliable. But it will still be produced by flawed human beings, like the "old."

Wiki on DOGE

If you wanted to find out what DOGE is, would you go to Wikipedia? Many would, because they think it is neutral and honest in reporting factual information in a non-partisan way. I wish that were the case. 

It has nothing good to say about this heroic effort to trim the federal budget. On the contrary, the reader only learns that DOGE is controversial, it inspires lawsuits, its claims to the discovery of fraud are false, its leader is ambiguous, it cuts good programs, it's a partisan political tool, etc., etc.

In short, Wikipedia's article is a hit job on DOGE and on Elon Musk. It reads like a partisan political tool itself. 

Wikipedia is the product of Katherine Maher's priorities. "Consensus" and "getting things done" come before truth on her priority list. Vital information is missing from the article. There's no effort to acknowledge the legitimate views of the people who support it.

Freer FB

"Destroyed trust." Head of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, says that his former policies of content moderation and fact-checker censors have destroyed the public's trust. Maybe he was actually sincere last September when he seemed to regret the censorship that Facebook has practiced.

It sounds like the message that Jeff Bezos delivered to Washington Post. It could be a trend, a good one. Many Americans have had enough of media efforts to force their own views down our throats. As they both said, we don't trust them anymore.

Zuckerberg says that Facebook is going to adopt something like X's community notes to function in place of fact-checkers.

Skeptical people think he's just kissing up to the new administration. Whether he is or not, Facebook will be a freer platform . . and that's a good thing.

New media 3

Follow-up to these posts here and here

 "2024 was arguably the year of the meteoric rise of the independent creator and the calamitous fall of the so-called legacy media." Jeff Bezos was just one of the many who noticed.

Independent writers can publish their own content on the Substack platform and earn their own following, even earning income if readers subscribe to it. Essentially, it's self-publishing so that they can move past the gatekeepers of old legacy media.

Bari Weiss was working for the New York Times but quit her job in 2020. She believed the NYT had abandoned important journalistic values by censoring ideas they didn't like. She and her wife, Nellie Bowles, started a newsletter on Substack that turned into a "new media company" which they call The Free Press.

In contrast to NPR (National Public Radio), they still try to search for the truth. They say "Free people deserve a Free Press."

Bari is the one who interviewed Tom Holland in yesterday's post.

 from Mind Matters

NPR funding $

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

If National Public Radio is more concerned with its elitist goals than with reporting true information, is it right to fund it with taxpayer money? Do we want our own money going there when it's biased in favor of only about half the country?

NPR defended itself when it claimed that just a mere 1% of its funding comes from government. But that's inaccurate when you look at the money trail. This article illuminates the complexity of their government funding:

"NPR may receive little direct federal funding, but a good deal of its budget comprises federal funds that flow to it indirectly by federal law." If you're interested in the complicated details, go here to see how that works.

Personally, I don't want my taxes going to NPR. There's an inherent problem when my taxes go to a news source committed to a point of view I don't support.

from The Hill

What's important?

National Public Radio (NPR) proudly announced its new CEO last January. Katherine Maher is an experienced executive who has "tackled the issues around reliable and accessible information for all."

"Reliable" ? Well, not exactly . . not if you really need to know the reality about a situation. True information is not her goal in leading this news-gathering organization. She says:

"I think our reverence for the truth might have become a bit of a distraction that is preventing us from finding consensus and getting things done."

So her goal for NPR is to get everybody to agree, presumably with their point of view. She probably has nothing against true information . . but only if it helps them get more important things done.

Americans don't trust news media, as Jeff Bezos said. This helps explain why.

(cont'd tomorrow)

New media 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Like the Washington Post says, "It's a grim time to be a member of the news media." Read that as, "old media." TV and newspapers may say that they investigate, that they do fact-checking, but most of us have found their claims of truthful neutrality unconvincing.

Yes, most of us. According to this recent Gallup Poll, 69% of Americans have little or no trust in the old mass media.

"Old media" tells us that social media is unreliable and X (Twitter) is failing, but as of last August X users had grown 22% over the previous year. In a Pew Research report, 54% of U.S. adults get news from social media often or sometimes (image).

Elon Musk says, "You are the new media."

New media

Legacy media is in decline (see Jeff Bezos' opinion about his Washington Post). Since the election on November 5, both MSNBC and CNN have lost about half their audience. Newspapers in general speak to only half of the audience they had back in 2000.

Newsweek says "traditional media's institutional collapse" came from "a growing sense among Americans that the media cannot be trusted to tell them the news they believe is fair," plus a failing business model.

It's not just one side of the political landscape which doesn't trust big media. "It actually transcends party," says one pollster. "Young people in particular are very distrusting of the media."

So where do people, especially young people, go for their news? Podcasts are popular. Joe Rogan's conversation with the president-elect had 40 million views. And what does Joe say? "X is the most reliable and most popular news source in the world."

 

from Newsweek 

(cont'd tomorrow) 

Old media 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Bezos wants to face reality, as he says, to "swallow" what he knows is a "bitter pill" to journalists, the fact that "Most people believe the media is biased." The only surprise to most of us in America is that it took so long for big corporate media to figure that out.

While their endorsements used to carry weight with American voters, now, he says, they carry no weight. Worst of all, they "create a perception of bias" (a true perception in my humble opinion.) "The Washington Post and the New York Times win prizes, but increasingly we talk only to a certain elite."

Who does he think did influence voters in our election on November 5? 

"Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions."

"Misinformation" is what the left wing party calls news/opinion that doesn't come from them. The elite still are super confident that they are superior and deserve unquestioned status. 

from Washington Post

Old media

Legacy media has been around for many years and includes some well-known names such as Washington Post and New York Times along with television broadcast news programs. Owned by huge corporations and billionaires, they carry huge political influence . . or did.

Jeff Bezos (photo), founder of Amazon, bought the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013. This year he shocked its fans when he announced that the Post would not endorse a political candidate for president of the U.S., an end to its long tradition. 

 

Editors, writers and readers were angry that the newspaper would not take the side of the left wing party, as in the past. Two hundred thousand subscribers cancelled.

Why did he do it? The Post ran his explanation: "The Hard Truth: Americans Don't Trust the News Media."

In recent surveys, media and journalists are nearly at the bottom of the list of professions Americans trust, he says. "But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Hurricane news 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

If you aren't seeing local videos of hurricane relief on your own X account, I'd like to show you some of what I've seen on mine:

* volunteers from New York NYPD and FDNY bring supplies

* working through the night to create bridges from fallen trees and telephone poles

* citizens organizing recovery without FEMA or any government help, helicopter pilots rescuing victims while paying for their own gasoline

* team finds a woman living alone has no food, no water, no power, no transport

* completed 67 helicopter missions (as of Oct 6) bringing fuel, generators, Starlink, more

Ordinary, regular, everyday Americans mobilize their bike clubs, churches, friends, etc., to come to the mountains of western North Carolina and bring help.

 

(cont'd tomorrow, groups making a difference)