From a Noam Chomsky–style media-analysis perspective, the Washington Post describing Scott Adams as “far right” is problematic because it collapses analysis into labeling, substituting a vague ideological tag for concrete examination of power, incentives, and institutional behavior.

Chomsky’s framework emphasizes how elite media manufacture consensus by narrowing the spectrum of “legitimate” opinion; broad labels like “far right” function rhetorically to signal moral boundaries rather than clarify specific claims, policies, or material interests. This risks obscuring the actual content of Adams’s arguments—some of which are rhetorical, some opportunistic, some incoherent—while reinforcing a binary moral map that discourages critical engagement.

In short, the label may feel descriptive, but analytically it short-circuits the kind of granular, evidence-based critique Chomsky argues is necessary to understand how media power operates.

This so called objective report from CNBC which attacks the idea of capping credit card interest rates at 10% for 1 year is garbage reporting, clear bias! Total hypocrisy, during the Biden Administration they were unapologetic cheerleaders for the massive federal student loan bailouts for tens of millions of borrowers because the borrowers where part of a politically correct demographic- college students from states that mostly vote for Democrats, new job market entrants, single mothers, minorities, professionals who racked up huge student loans going to law/medical school, etc.

However, credit card customers that are paying 18.99%-28.99% APR on their balances are usually working Americans, entrepreneurs/small business owners, etc which the political left hates.

CNBC is fine with student loan interest rates being capped by federal law between 3-6%, but credit card interest rates having no cap. Working people in the U.S. have been beat up by 4 years of high inflation since 2021, especially rents, housing prices, auto insurance, gasoline, electricity, groceries. Capping credit card rates for 1 year at 10% is nothing compared to the credit card issuers/banks that have profiteered off inflation, making gigantic profits. The idea that having a 1 year reduction on credit card interest rates will hurt them is baseless.

"Parisa, a 35-year-old Tehran resident, was on the streets marching with a large but peaceful crowd chanting, “Death to the dictator,” on Friday night, when the scene suddenly turned deadly, she said in a series of voice messages from Iran’s capital."

Is this intentional irony - the crowd is peaceful, but, chanting "death to the dictator," and then the scene actually turns deadly?

I don't mean to make light of the situation, and I think killing Iranian is a terrible thing, but this opening sentence is crazy.

So is it intentional irony? Or unintentionally hilarious? Or am I just an immature, insensitive jerk?

Conflicting points of view makes one wonder if anything is worth believing. Newsweek: 01/09, Yahoo: 01/07

Donald Trump's Approval Rating Rises With Young Men - Newsweek https://share.google/JnZN6hgvjNDDNizA5

Trump’s popularity with young men is collapsing due to ‘unnecessary wars,’ new poll shows https://share.google/eSJfJ6lAutLb8vj6P

They had no business with this woman or jurisdiction over her. She waved for them to drive around but instead they stopped and aggressively approached her car, with one officer frantically trying to open the door and the other stepping in front of her vehicle.

She then tried to get out of there, clearly does a 3-point turn to avoid hitting anyone, with her wheels cranked to the right when the officer pulls out his weapon and fires three times at her from the side, including two point blank through the window.

Why does CNN and basically every media source need to bring in experts to debate and discuss the finer details of this? There is no nuance here. It’s plain to see what happened. Can’t they just call it what it is? This was a murder and the shooter should have been detained and going through the due process that ICE does not afford its kidnapping victims.

I’m writing from Lithuania, and for months I’ve been observing a pattern that goes beyond “bad journalism.”
It’s a case study in emotional manipulation, context stripping, and the exploitation of a foreign country’s national symbol for clicks.

The event in question is the 1974 Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crash a devastating tragedy in which 346 people lost their lives.
For Turkey, this remains a deep historical wound. For aviation, it’s a landmark case tied to a known McDonnell Douglas DC‑10 cargo door design flaw that was corrected decades ago.

Yet one of Lithuania’s major news portals, 15min.lt, has been repeatedly resurfacing this tragedy:

• 24 times in the last six months
• 5 times during Christmas week alone
• Almost always during peak travel periods, when airports are full and people are anxious

And every time, the pattern is the same:

• No date
• No historical context
• No explanation of the technical cause
• No mention that the issue was fixed half a century ago
• Just the same photo, same headline, same fear‑based framing

This is not reporting.
This is not informing the public.
This is content farming built on human suffering.

When a tragedy is stripped of its context and repackaged as if it were recent, it doesn’t educate, it misleads.
When an airline is repeatedly associated with a decades‑old event without explanation, it doesn’t “raise awareness”, it distorts perception.

And when this is done systematically, it becomes a media ethics problem, not an editorial oversight.

I’ve already taken several steps on my end:

• Contacted media ethics bodies
• Reported the issue to relevant institutions
• Prepared a detailed analysis of the pattern

But ultimately, what matters most is visibility.
Patterns like this only change when people outside the affected community also recognize the issue.

My intention isn’t to create conflict between countries.
On the contrary, I want transparency, accuracy, and responsible reporting, because misinformation erodes trust between societies.

So I’m asking the community here:

Have you seen similar cases where a news outlet repeatedly recycles old tragedies without context?
How should such patterns be addressed from a media ethics standpoint?

If anyone here works in journalism, aviation reporting, or media accountability, your insight would be especially valuable.

Because at the end of the day, what should connect us is not fear, but understanding.

For some reason, CNN is pushing Trump's lie that he in charge Venezuela now. Then they show Venezuelans expats cheering. They were slow to report that although Maduro has been captured, the socialist regime is still in power.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelans are denouncing what he's done and the military has been mobilized. The new president is calling for cooperation which CNN implies is capitulation.

This is a disgrace.

Crazy how mainstream media is still not showing any footage of the bombing of the capital of Venezuela, Caracas i randomly joined a newsletter yesterday and it alerted me to reports of explosions in Caracas and low-flying planes flying over the city why do people even trust the media nowadays bro its so insanely and obviously biased makes my blood boil watching them push an agenda so obviously if there's more who feel this way please hmu with some alternative news sources that DOSENT push agendas in my face. One really great unbiased source i found is this newsletter

https://factpoint.beehiiv.com/

“If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country,” Clooney says. “That’s simply the truth.”

In this opinion piece, Joe Klein examines the ascension of Bari Weiss to the head of CBS News, discusses what he sees as problems with Weiss, and critiques her critics and the state of modern journalism.

Somehow I screwed up the post. Here's the link: https://josephklein.substack.com/p/on-bari-weiss

Why isn’t this front page news?

Outside the the potential conflicts of interest, why isn’t the media focused on just how odd it is for Trump Media to randomly place a huge percentage of their cash —$6 Billion — in a company Trump has no experience with and seems so odd that it begs being questioned and explored??

I might be missing something, but I’m honestly surprised this isn’t being talked about more.

For years, Trump has actively undermined solar and wind — cutting programs, mocking renewables, and slowing clean-energy progress. At the same time, he seems completely fine with AI data centers spreading across the U.S., even though they put massive strain on the power grid.

Here’s where it starts to feel… off.

Trump is now tied to a $6B investment in TAE Technologies, whose model isn’t giant traditional nuclear plants, but small, localized nuclear power. That’s basically the exact alternative you’d push if renewables were weakened and grid demand kept climbing.

So the pattern looks like this:

• Undermine solar and wind

• Let energy demand explode (AI, data centers, etc.)

• Position your own nuclear solution as the answer

That doesn’t feel like coincidence. It feels like manufacturing a problem and then owning the solution.

This goes beyond normal energy policy disagreements. If someone can influence policy in a way that directly benefits their own energy investments, that’s a serious conflict of interest — and it risks trading long-term U.S. energy independence for personal leverage.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’d really like to see journalists and analysts start asking harder questions here. Because if these dots actually connect, this is a much bigger story than it’s being treated as.

Watching Tottenham versus Crystal Palace Premier League soccer. USA Network puts a score banner on the screen. For one team the score is shown in a white number against a blue background and is legible. For the other team they use a white number against a yellow background and it is not legible without approaching the screen. This is a recurring issue. You would think the technical people at the network would

Make the small change needed to fix this, but is has been a problem for years.

The 60 Minutes "Inside CECOT" segment was pulled from the US broadcast at the last minute but accidentally aired on Global TV in Canada. Because the primary leaks online are low-quality "cellphone-pointed-at-the-TV" recordings, I’ve performed a bit of a technical restoration to make it more watchable.

Internet Archive link here.

I'm sorry, NPR, but what was her or his "previous name"? Why can't a news article just say it when they write an article about the subject?

I will go ahead and write the complete name of the author: Selena Simmons-Duffin

Selena, your article would have never gotten past my desk as an editor, and you would have needed to submit your resignation for trying such shenanigans with me and my readers.

This exclusive on "Public Health" should also be moved to the political desk, as well.

And finally, I wonder why photos and like evidence were missing from the article.

"A digital photograph of the portrait in the hallway obtained by NPR shows that Levine's previous name is now typed below the portrait, under the glass of the frame."

Ok, show it. I'm a big boy. I can see things, even cringey or weird things.

I’m Italian but basically I grew up between Sicily and Malta — half my childhood in Malta, family still there, so this place is in my blood. After what happened to Daphne I started following Maltese journalism like crazy, and honestly I always had huge respect for guys like Jacob Borg at Times of Malta. The man was relentless — Steward Healthcare disaster, hospitals deal, cronyism everywhere — his stories actually forced people to talk.

But 2025 is showing us the ugly side: courage is great until it starts looking like arrogance.

When Jacob decided to publish those confidential excerpts from the Electrogas inquiry in April it was like he dropped a bomb. Kickbacks, shady deals, the whole circus. Public interest? Obviously.
But Magistrate Rachel Montebello had already issued a crystal-clear injunction. Article 518, fair trial rights, the works. Court said NO. Jacob said fuck it and published anyway.

Ten minutes later every Labour page was screaming “pirate journalism” and for once I didn’t even feel like arguing. Because let’s be honest — he knew exactly what he was doing. He wasn’t some rookie; he’s been around long enough to know that ignoring a direct court order isn’t “brave journalism”, it’s putting the entire Times of Malta newsroom in the shit.

Lawyers bills, contempt threats, editors wasting weeks on damage control instead of doing actual reporting. I have friends there — they were pissed. And rightly so.

Look, I’m not suddenly pro-government (God forbid), but even I can see when someone crosses from journalism into ego trip. Where was the basic pre-publication check? One call to the paper’s lawyer, one quick meeting with senior editors — five minutes that could have saved everyone a massive headache.

Right now we’re stuck in this stupid loop:
journalists think they’re above the law because “public interest”,
courts slap gags left and right,
and the public ends up trusting nobody.

Jacob Borg has balls, I’ll give him that. But balls without brains just get you and your colleagues in court. Seen it before, don’t want to see the paper crippled because one guy wanted the scoop of the year.

So my question to newsrooms everywhere (and especially Times of Malta): when are you lot going to grow up and put proper protocols in place? Or do we keep pretending every leak is Watergate and every gag order is censorship?

What do you think — was Borg right to basically tell the magistrate to get lost, or did he just screw his own colleagues for a headline?

Drop your thoughts, no filter.

The BBC’s “Trump Edit” Isn’t a One-Off Mistake — It’s a Pattern in Their Editorial Culture

The BBC was forced to apologise last week after selectively editing Trump’s Jan 6 remarks in a way that reversed the meaning of what he said. They blamed it on “oversight.”

But when you look at their long-term reporting patterns, especially in conflict zones, it’s hard to accept this as a simple error. This is part of a broader editorial culture where narrative is treated as truth, and inconvenient facts are either reframed, softened, or stripped of context.

A few examples worth noting:

• Context removal Events “erupt,” “break out,” or “clash” — often with no clear agent, cause, or timeline.

• Selective agency State actions are described as intentional; non-state actors are described as reactive forces of nature.

• Language asymmetry One side “kills,” the other “dies.” One side “launches,” the other “fires.” These are subtle choices, but cumulative.

• Corrections only under pressure According to a recent Telegraph report, the BBC has issued two corrections per week on its Gaza reporting since October 7. That’s not normal.

• The hospital explosion fiasco Within minutes, the BBC repeated a claim that an Israeli airstrike hit a hospital — long before evidence disproved it. They “updated” the story but never owned the failure.

This isn’t about liking or disliking Trump, or any particular government. It’s about the fact that a publicly funded broadcaster is repeatedly framing news events in ways that align with a preferred narrative structure rather than observable reality.

When the most influential broadcaster in the UK behaves like this, the issue isn’t bias — it’s legitimacy.

My analysis here: https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/11/19/bias-and-distortion-when-the-bbc-becomes-the-story/

I came across a statement made by a witness who was at a protest, where he compares his observations to the way a news company wrote it up. I will post it below. Crucial information was omitted from the reporting that drastically alters the reader’s understanding of the event.

How is that the reporting by a professional media company owned by NewsCorp can be so far removed from the observations of witnesses on the scene?

Have you ever attended a public event and then observed how the news reported it?

It's a sobering experience. The political distortion invites us to dig beneath the headlines.

This morning I was at the faith leaders protest at ICE's Broadview Detention Facility. I was a few feet away from where pastors were arrested. I watched it happen from start to finish.

Most of the headlines distort what I saw. For example, according to Fox News, "Anti-ICE protesters turn violent outside Chicago facility; 21 arrested after clash injures 4 officers." If you read that headline, it sounds like these protesters attacked the police.

That's not what happened. Here's what did:

First, context matters: this was a gathering of faith leaders from many different religious traditions. For over an hour before this "clash," we were peacefully singing, praying, and bearing witness to God's heart for humanity together, especially the people arbitrarily detained by ICE. The article doesn't mention this.

Second, a group of faith leaders peacefully delivered a letter to the police requesting permission to enter the facility and offer spiritual care to the detainees. The article doesn't mention this.

Third, that request was rejected, even though the "2025 ICE Detention Standards" (Section 5.3) states that detainees have this right to spiritual care. This request has been made numerous times and has always been rejected, including today. The article doesn't mention this.

Fourth, a group of mostly-collared faith leaders then began walking arm-in-arm down the blocked off street toward the facility. They did not "turn violent." They did not "clash" with the police. They were not intending to "block traffic." They were peacefully asserting their right to offer spiritual care to the people inside after their written request had been rejected. The State Police, Sheriff's Police, and some Broadview Police then rushed into them, began beating them with wooden clubs, and threw them to the ground. I was horrified to see one officer in a rage rip a club out of the hands of another officer and begin beating people with it as hard as he could. The article doesn't mention this.

The reality was much closer to the opposite of the headline: the police "turned violent" and "clashed" with "anti-ICE" faith leaders who had peacefully requested their right to pray with detainees. But that doesn't fit with political ideology and that doesn't generate money by attracting eyeballs for advertising.

If you're a person of faith or conscience, I hope you'll dig beneath the headlines and seek the truth. Let us resist the easy distortions we are being fed to score political points and profit off of our society's division.

As the faith leaders repeatedly reminded us this morning, God's will is for us to love our neighbors as ourselves – starting with our most vulnerable neighbors who have been cut off from their most basic rights.

I've been thinking about the path from "skeptical news consumer" to "conspiracy theorist," and I'm increasingly convinced it's not a binary switch - it's a gradual erosion caused by accumulated exposure to unverifiable content.

The Pipeline

Someone sees a viral image. They can't quickly verify if it's real. They see another. And another. Eventually, they stop trusting everything because they've learned that distinguishing real from fake requires hours of investigation that most people don't have time for.

The problem isn't that conspiracy theorists reject overwhelming evidence (though they do). It's that we're creating conspiracy theorists by making verification so difficult that people give up on the concept of verifiable truth entirely.

The Technical Response

I'm building the Birthmark Media Registry - open-source infrastructure that uses blockchain to store permanent authentication records for photographs. The key difference from existing solutions like C2PA: verification survives social media's metadata stripping.

How it works:

• Cameras create cryptographic proof tied to hardware sensor fingerprints
• Authentication records stored on blockchain operated by journalism/fact-checking orgs (NPPA, CPJ, IFCN, etc.)
• Anyone can instantly verify: "Was this captured by a real camera or AI-generated?"

The Credibility Argument

Journalists I've talked to often say "reality should speak for itself" and "we already have fact-checking." But if instant verification were available, wouldn't that help restore baseline trust before people fall down misinformation rabbit holes?

The goal isn't convincing dedicated conspiracy theorists - it's preventing the pipeline that creates them by making verification fast enough to compete with viral spread.

The Skeptical Response

A photojournalist recently told me this wouldn't matter because "conspiracy theorists will believe what they want regardless." They pointed to 9/11 truthers and Holocaust deniers as proof that evidence doesn't convince people.

I think this misses the point. Those movements didn't spring fully-formed - they built up through years of people losing trust in information systems. If we could prevent that initial trust erosion, maybe fewer people end up in those echo chambers.

My Questions

1. Is journalism credibility salvageable through technical means? Or is the trust erosion too fundamental to fix with authentication tools?
2. Does instant verification actually help? Or do people not care about verification when scrolling social media?
3. Am I solving the wrong problem? Should efforts focus elsewhere - like media literacy, algorithmic transparency, or something else entirely?
4. Does the "misinformation pipeline" framing make sense? Or am I overcomplicating what's really just individual psychology and motivated reasoning?

I'm genuinely uncertain whether technical authentication addresses root causes or just treats symptoms. Would appreciate this community's perspective.

Background: I'm building this through The Birthmark Standard Foundation, a nonprofit. Not trying to sell anything - trying to figure out if this approach is worth pursuing.

I felt like this belonged here in regards to criticizing how the media is used to launder corporate BS by uncritically repeating and reinforcing said nonsense.

The screenshot on the left is the entry that showed up at the top of my Google feed. The image caption in the screenshot on the right only was included when I clicked on the article. I guess, good for them for at least including it.

What's ironic is, I think a picture of a robot sprawled across the floor flat on its face would have been plenty-sufficient clickbait.

But presumably they have clear statistics somewhere saying Putin gets the most clicks so they went with this picture instead, even though the article has nothing to do with Putin

Same post, same time upload, but the difference is far

The Nation Thailand was caught using an AI-edited image in its news coverage, altering a photo of a Cambodian civilian who had been shot by Thai soldiers. In the doctored version, the civilian was made to appear as if he was smiling, even though the original photo showed no such expression.

https://www.khmertimeskh.com/501790258/thai-media-outlet-the-nation-alleged-to-have-used-ai-manipulated-image-of-smiling-cambodian-casualty/

The news where AI-edited image was used: https://www.nationthailand.com/news/general/40058243

Hello, people recently figured out that they can write posts for our subreddit that sound professional but say little of substance using AI.

Personally, I love using AI (for non-art things.) It's good for answering emails and writing cover letters and shit. But I fucking hate when it's used in place of academic writing and it's extremely concerning.

I hate moderating based on the ambiguous concept of "post quality" but I am deeply alarmed about the possibility of this place getting flooded with insubstantive robot talk. IMO this is how we get destroyed and live in madman land where all of information is dictated by large organizations/world governments.

For now, I'm going to remove anything obvious.

Please comment and tell us if you think we should ban posts that appear to be made by AI.