....and for those bits self-selected by the individual media consumer, to validate existing beliefs.
This bit of what The Lancet, purportedly a scientific journal, was up to is just plain ewwww.
Via the previously unknown to me Ataraxis (with our background posts after the jump)
The editor of @TheLancet today admitting to @UKParliament that US-China politics influenced their decision to publish a 2020 letter dismissing the lab leak theory as a “conspiracy theory” — despite there being “[no] evidence one way or the other”. pic.twitter.com/cwEERXSfoi
— Ataraxis (@ataraxisfinch) December 15, 2021
This is some sick shit.
Recently regarding The Lancet:
- Covid-19 Origins: Well Speak Of The Devils
- Addendum: "Leaked Grant Proposal Details High-Risk Coronavirus Research"
- It's Not Rocket Surgery: "Rocket Scientists vs Brain Surgeons: Who Do You Think Is Ultimately Smarter?" (plus the BMJ Christmas issue)
And on the mass media
No longer were the wires or the papers the place to find news. Instead they became the place for readers to, as Mr. Mir puts it:
....Because of the internet, ad revenue in the media has declined much faster than reader revenue. The media were therefore forced to switch to the reader revenue business model aimed to sell content. However, as content is free on the internet, it is hard to sell. People almost always already know the news before they come to news websites because they invariably start their daily media routine with newsfeeds on social media. Increasingly, therefore, if and when people turn to the news media, it is not to find news, but rather to validate already known news.
Thus, the reader revenue the news media now seeks is not a payment for news; it is actually more a validation fee. The audience still agrees to pay for the validation of news within the accepted and sanctioned value system. After switching from ad revenue to reader revenue, the business of the media has mutated from news supply to news validation....
That was seen in our August 14 post: "Postjournalism and the death of newspapers" + "Factoids and Fake News"
If interested a week later was a bit of a reductio look at Mir's thinking in "The Algorithm—The media's new business model is propaganda."
And related:
"Slouching Toward Post-Journalism"
- "Elites have lost control of the information agenda..."
- Mir: "The news media: watchdogs prefer the paywalled garden"
- Imagine That: Earliest Surviving Secular Song Is An English Guy Talking About The Weather
- Media: How Newspapers Are Like Resort Photographers
