I for one am not interested in conspiracy theories and while I was aware somehow that there was this Candace person and it somehow involved Erika Kirk, I have not followed it. I am not interested in “personalities”. That is my solution to nonsense.
The NYT’s recent editorial moderation occurred only because management finally realized “the jig is up,” i.e., their journalistic bias has been a hot mess and we have the receipts to prove it. The pendulum calls the tune, and it’s time The Old Gray Lady took a seat and tended to her self-inflicted wounds.
The hard truth is that human independent-mindedness is the exception, not the norm. Most people are moral/philosophical sheep....always have been and always will. Left, right and centre.
'I came across a book recently by philosopher Richard Rorty published in 1989. It is about the importance of stories to the human psyche....to how we make sense of our lives. In a nutshell – contrary to the Enlightenment Age of Reason paradigm of reality constructed from tools of logic and analysis – most people in fact, piece together their big picture of reality in large measure from stories they have heard or read or made up in their own heads.' [ https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west ]
All of us alive today have lived in the time of a great media-driven - Western narrative of "'social justice' to be brought about by 'politics'". It has always been bogus and may well get supplanted in the not-too-distant future by some new hegemonic narrative. Which the vast majority of people will then follow, just as they did the last one.
Used to be that the WSJ was a reliable news source and had a reliably right of center Editorial Board. But that ship has sunk too. DJT’s first election, the Covid Mess, BLM and finally DJT’s second election have permanently destroyed the mental state of the news division. It now is indistinguishable from the NYT. The EB has also lost its way. It is reflexively opposed to Trump, axiomatically opposed to tariffs and regularly flirts with the Climate Idiocracy. I stuck with them for a while thinking they might right the ship, but I’ve given up. So, X and Substack it is.
You’re correct about the WSJ. Had it for over 40 years and it’s no better than the NYT pushing narratives and outright lies and ignoring 100% things like Artic Frost or any of the revelations that Tulsi Gabbard made regarding Russiagate etc. the Murdoch boys are in operational control now and they are destroying its credibility
I think at this point that the Murdoch boys have succeeded in destroying the WSJ’s credibility. Wish there was a way to expel them from the WSJ and Fox. They are unfit. Some of the EB actually look like they’re making hostage videos.
The amount of class interest and irrational, emotionalized ‘word spells’ on the left cannot be overstated. If you peel back the beliefs of a progressive you often find an insecure, educated person who believes they’re better informed than they are (we all do) and who wants to feel like a kind, selfless person… without actually doing or sacrificing anything.
The brittle insecurity of the worldview and the remove most believers enjoy from crime or war or poverty are both vulnerabilities which can be exploited in debates and discussions.
Christopher, how you overlook the obvious. A better apples-to-apples comparison is the New York Times and the New York Post. Consider Hunter’s laptop. One organization pretended, without any solid information, the device was a product of Russia Disinformation Incorporated. The other organization went to the mat researching, printing, and defending the story. One paper persuaded, the other educated. Most NYT staff are not dumb; they can find and disseminate the facts when they choose to do so. Only then can NYT be credited with “educating” the readership.
This week, Candace Owens met with Erika Kirk for a 4 1/2 hour, very productive meeting, which included lawyers.
Now Candace has greatly softened her resolve on certain conspiracy aspects, prompting an immediate and angry backlash in her comments section. Are these bots or legitimate people?
Well, we'll see how long Candace cools off with her momentous rhetoric on the Charlie Kirk conspiracy.
I like the idea that X does actually pay, but I hate the idea that bots are influencing view counts and click counts. Definitely get rid of the bots.
If you go back in time before mass media like radio and Television you will find that every single community had two newspapers one that reported the news favorably to democrats and one the reported the news favorably to republicans. The rise of mass media and the federal government’s artificial limits created monopolies that were then captured 100% by the left. Who at their peak power ran a President out of office Rush Limbaugh broke their stranglehold on the narrative and the podcast world and outlets like Twitter and Substack have allowed independent journalists to thrive Corporate MSM is dead it just doesn’t realize it yet. There is only one thing that can save it and that’s government subsidies. Congress needs to act now to never ever allow any taxpayer money to flow to any media companies or any NGO who fund media companies.
Please don't let the NYT off the hook for the large part they played in Russiagate and Hillary's unsecured server. Jeff Gerth did a great four part series for the Columbia Journalism Review, The Press Vs the President, which gives great insight into the part into that paper's shameful covering of those incidents. I'm a conservative and not one bit influenced by Candace Owens and rarely glance at X.
As always, very good points. That said, your suggestions seem to call for X tweaking its algorithm so some accounts are elevated and others demoted. Essentially, you'd like to see an "editor."
Obviously, some would call that censorship, and, unless he changes his mind, it doesn't fit Musk's vision of X being the "Global Townsquare."
His point is that there’s a sophisticated algorithm behind X, like all social media. It needs tweaking to promote higher quality, higher credibility content, and to demote the bots and the rage peddlers
But someone has to decide what counts as “higher-quality” vs. “rage-bait.”
Even if well-intentioned, doesn’t that become at least a mild form of censorship (the kind you like, but others won’t)?
Musk says he’s tweaking to reduce bots/spam, but he’s also often stated that the algorithm should reflect what people actually engage with, not what gatekeepers think they should see.
I’m still holding onto the old idea that the cure for bad speech is more speech—and Rufo himself is proof that it can work powerfully.
Excellent commentary. I believe a venue like X should be relatively free, but as you say, maybe a dose of better supervision is in order. The Candace Owens of the world are poison. Not easy to quiet them or get rid of them.
This gets at something fundamental. Control rarely requires persuading people of falsehoods. It is usually enough to keep them occupied, fragmented, and reacting rather than thinking. Over time, that produces not clarity, but paralysis.
I looked at the downstream human consequences of this dynamic in The Six Degrees of Desperation — how deferred truth and institutional avoidance do not disappear, but reemerge as personal collapse rather than public correction.
I for one am not interested in conspiracy theories and while I was aware somehow that there was this Candace person and it somehow involved Erika Kirk, I have not followed it. I am not interested in “personalities”. That is my solution to nonsense.
Same here. Doubt that more than 5% of conservatives believe the bull she's spreading. There will always be crazies. She's not important.
On the flip side, it is interesting how many of those conspiracy theories have proven to be true (not Candace’s, but in general).
Yeah, I figure conspiracy theorists are batting 1.000.
Amen
The NYT’s recent editorial moderation occurred only because management finally realized “the jig is up,” i.e., their journalistic bias has been a hot mess and we have the receipts to prove it. The pendulum calls the tune, and it’s time The Old Gray Lady took a seat and tended to her self-inflicted wounds.
Just curious what is going to happen at BBC after Trump's lawsuit.
The hard truth is that human independent-mindedness is the exception, not the norm. Most people are moral/philosophical sheep....always have been and always will. Left, right and centre.
'I came across a book recently by philosopher Richard Rorty published in 1989. It is about the importance of stories to the human psyche....to how we make sense of our lives. In a nutshell – contrary to the Enlightenment Age of Reason paradigm of reality constructed from tools of logic and analysis – most people in fact, piece together their big picture of reality in large measure from stories they have heard or read or made up in their own heads.' [ https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/once-upon-a-time-in-the-west ]
All of us alive today have lived in the time of a great media-driven - Western narrative of "'social justice' to be brought about by 'politics'". It has always been bogus and may well get supplanted in the not-too-distant future by some new hegemonic narrative. Which the vast majority of people will then follow, just as they did the last one.
It takes a skill to fish the facts out of propaganda. This is why I go to both Fox News and NYT, to pill the narrative off and get the facts.
Used to be that the WSJ was a reliable news source and had a reliably right of center Editorial Board. But that ship has sunk too. DJT’s first election, the Covid Mess, BLM and finally DJT’s second election have permanently destroyed the mental state of the news division. It now is indistinguishable from the NYT. The EB has also lost its way. It is reflexively opposed to Trump, axiomatically opposed to tariffs and regularly flirts with the Climate Idiocracy. I stuck with them for a while thinking they might right the ship, but I’ve given up. So, X and Substack it is.
You’re correct about the WSJ. Had it for over 40 years and it’s no better than the NYT pushing narratives and outright lies and ignoring 100% things like Artic Frost or any of the revelations that Tulsi Gabbard made regarding Russiagate etc. the Murdoch boys are in operational control now and they are destroying its credibility
I think at this point that the Murdoch boys have succeeded in destroying the WSJ’s credibility. Wish there was a way to expel them from the WSJ and Fox. They are unfit. Some of the EB actually look like they’re making hostage videos.
wherever did you get the idea that "The purpose of the media is to teach the public how to think"?
I assume he meant "what to think". Already a pessimistic version of "inform objectively".
Very hard to teach people "how to think". That's mostly innate and/or taught at young age.
Amen to that. They have never done that and never will. It was called yellow journalism for a reason.
The amount of class interest and irrational, emotionalized ‘word spells’ on the left cannot be overstated. If you peel back the beliefs of a progressive you often find an insecure, educated person who believes they’re better informed than they are (we all do) and who wants to feel like a kind, selfless person… without actually doing or sacrificing anything.
The brittle insecurity of the worldview and the remove most believers enjoy from crime or war or poverty are both vulnerabilities which can be exploited in debates and discussions.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/cryptic-evil-and-word-spells
Christopher, how you overlook the obvious. A better apples-to-apples comparison is the New York Times and the New York Post. Consider Hunter’s laptop. One organization pretended, without any solid information, the device was a product of Russia Disinformation Incorporated. The other organization went to the mat researching, printing, and defending the story. One paper persuaded, the other educated. Most NYT staff are not dumb; they can find and disseminate the facts when they choose to do so. Only then can NYT be credited with “educating” the readership.
AWG nailed it!
This week, Candace Owens met with Erika Kirk for a 4 1/2 hour, very productive meeting, which included lawyers.
Now Candace has greatly softened her resolve on certain conspiracy aspects, prompting an immediate and angry backlash in her comments section. Are these bots or legitimate people?
Well, we'll see how long Candace cools off with her momentous rhetoric on the Charlie Kirk conspiracy.
I like the idea that X does actually pay, but I hate the idea that bots are influencing view counts and click counts. Definitely get rid of the bots.
Bots need to go!
If you go back in time before mass media like radio and Television you will find that every single community had two newspapers one that reported the news favorably to democrats and one the reported the news favorably to republicans. The rise of mass media and the federal government’s artificial limits created monopolies that were then captured 100% by the left. Who at their peak power ran a President out of office Rush Limbaugh broke their stranglehold on the narrative and the podcast world and outlets like Twitter and Substack have allowed independent journalists to thrive Corporate MSM is dead it just doesn’t realize it yet. There is only one thing that can save it and that’s government subsidies. Congress needs to act now to never ever allow any taxpayer money to flow to any media companies or any NGO who fund media companies.
Please don't let the NYT off the hook for the large part they played in Russiagate and Hillary's unsecured server. Jeff Gerth did a great four part series for the Columbia Journalism Review, The Press Vs the President, which gives great insight into the part into that paper's shameful covering of those incidents. I'm a conservative and not one bit influenced by Candace Owens and rarely glance at X.
Good point
As always, very good points. That said, your suggestions seem to call for X tweaking its algorithm so some accounts are elevated and others demoted. Essentially, you'd like to see an "editor."
Obviously, some would call that censorship, and, unless he changes his mind, it doesn't fit Musk's vision of X being the "Global Townsquare."
His point is that there’s a sophisticated algorithm behind X, like all social media. It needs tweaking to promote higher quality, higher credibility content, and to demote the bots and the rage peddlers
All true—every algorithm has biases.
But someone has to decide what counts as “higher-quality” vs. “rage-bait.”
Even if well-intentioned, doesn’t that become at least a mild form of censorship (the kind you like, but others won’t)?
Musk says he’s tweaking to reduce bots/spam, but he’s also often stated that the algorithm should reflect what people actually engage with, not what gatekeepers think they should see.
I’m still holding onto the old idea that the cure for bad speech is more speech—and Rufo himself is proof that it can work powerfully.
I see the conspiracy purveyors as temporary. We need to distinguish between clicks for laughs and clicks for information.
What people search for is far more important.
It's interesting that you never mentioned Tucker Carlson alongside Candice Owens.
No! It is the role of the media to report. Nothing more.
Excellent commentary. I believe a venue like X should be relatively free, but as you say, maybe a dose of better supervision is in order. The Candace Owens of the world are poison. Not easy to quiet them or get rid of them.
This gets at something fundamental. Control rarely requires persuading people of falsehoods. It is usually enough to keep them occupied, fragmented, and reacting rather than thinking. Over time, that produces not clarity, but paralysis.
I looked at the downstream human consequences of this dynamic in The Six Degrees of Desperation — how deferred truth and institutional avoidance do not disappear, but reemerge as personal collapse rather than public correction.
https://mrchrisarnell.com/p/six-degrees-of-desperation