We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day Journalists have often tended to be on the Left – some of the most feared murderers of the French Revolution were hacks – but there has definitely been an acceleration. In the 1960s the trend was about 2 to 1, but by the 2000s as little as 7% identified as conservative, compared to 33% of the US public, a figure repeated in a report a decade later.
Rather unsurprisingly, polls show American trust in the media declining, a trend that accelerated in 2008 when swathes of Americans came to believe journalists were conspiring to get Obama elected. I don’t think Donald Trump’s open hostility to journalists did him any harm, nor do I think it will harm the prospects of any future populist.
– Ed West
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Quote is true. A current example:
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/when-the-narrative-replaces-the-news-9ea
The Fake News Media does this INTENTIONALLY. Not once in a while but every single day. On small things and big things. Good things and bad things. Constantly pushing their fake bullshit narratives. Lies of omission, mischaracterization, falsehoods, misquotes, taking things out of context, etc etc etc. It never ends. They have no remorse, no regret, and they make no apologies. It’s not only to drive greater profit, there is also an ideological motivation, a virtue signaling motivation, a Woke motivation. Toxic.
Whatever has happened to the political preference of journalists, the editorial “stance” of British newspapers has definitely shifted left in the last 50 years. The Times, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Sun all used to be clearly on the right, though with different admixtures of long words, pictures of Royals and boobies. On the left there was just the Graun and the Mirror. Ol’ Rupe used to flip the Sun’s election vote recommendation from time to time but that didn’t affect the day to day stance. The pink ‘un was mostly conservative too, though they had opinion slots for lefties.
Now even the Daily Mail isn’t “on the right” as such – you can read a lot of right wing oriented stories there, which are invisible elsewhere, but you can also read a lot of other stories from left and centre. They will steal stories for their online version from anywhere they can get ’em. The Mail is roughly the most middle of the road, open to all viewpoints outlet available, which is an amazing thing. Meanwhile The Times, Telegraph, Express and especially FT can hardly be called right wing. They’re mostly just mouthpieces for the Establishment – which is of course mostly leftie. In the FT’s case, of course, the Brussels Establishment.
The media have a piece of string with which to pull public opinion in its desired direction. But if it pulls too hard, or jerks, the string breaks.
Off with Jay Baker’s head. If this botched reporting isn’t typical of American media, I don’t know what is:
https://reason.com/2021/03/19/aaron-robert-long-spa-killer-atlanta-jay-baker-cop-bad-day/
Does the Jay Baker story remind you of anything? If this kind of trick was rare, it could be chalked up to an honest mistake. But, consider the Covington kids. That shit show targeted innocent children. Most of the media figures, who vilified those high school kids, have withdrawn their remarks and apologized, but there are still hold outs who (Sen Warren, Rep Haaland) are hiding behind the shield of congressional privilege to lie and defame. This case is pending before the Supreme Court.
Then there is the recent claim that Trump attempted to intimidate the Georgia Secretary of States’ Office and that he was going to be subject to criminal prosecution for his alleged threats. The quotes attributed to him were fabricated, they were bogus.
Sharyl Attkisson, journalist, has documented some of the more egregious examples of lies about Trump.
As an American, when an inflammatory story hits the media, I, like most people I know, don’t take it seriously, anticipating that some of the truth will trickle out in the weeks and sometimes months to follow. I give you the George Floyd story. Most people have heard the inculpatory evidence but not the exculpatory.
On the recurring subject of GF I deplore the fact that while watching Sky Sports I am regularly subjected to a “banner” occupying 1/3 of the screen inviting me to watch 8 minutes and 40 seconds of the killing of George Floyd “available on demand”.
What with their neverending in-screen references to black history month, blm, rainbow laces etc plus the whining of my former hero Mikey Holding the chances of my subscription being renewed are minimal.
The Schools of Journalism were created to push “Social Reform” – i.e. more government spending and regulations. The guff about “objective” and “unbiased” is in basic contradiction to their objective.
If you recruit people from places that have the objective of pushing Collectivism, it is not a surprise that most of them turn out to be Collectivists – and YES most of the Schools of Journalism have got much worse over time.
But it is not just the Schools of Journalism – it is most of the education system, both schools and universities, and the people they produce dominate more Corporations (not just media ones) now. Collectivist doctrines (loosely called being “Woke”) dominate the board room – not just the class room.
It may well be that our society, Western society, has passed the point of no return.
General Attius is dead “with your left hand you have cut off your right” as a brave man said of the betrayal and murder of Attius by the Emperor Valentinian III – the Goths sacked the City years ago, and soon it will be the turn of the Vandals.
There will be no Western Army, worthy of the name, again – these days they are taught “Critical Race Theory” and “Trans Rights” – the enemies of the dying West laugh, and their laughter is like daggers.
Lee Moores’ point about how the UK papers have shifted is something I’ve long wondered about, I suspect its partly due to a generational turnover of staff (young people entering the profession having been indoctrinated by the left at uni), but I do wonder how they end up working for ‘right wing’ papers- do the papers know about their political views when they apply for jobs? If so why do they hire them? Or do they lie about their views to get their foot in the door?
Actually, I think it is about the demands of the job. All media are trying to grab our attention as quickly as possible. That requires sensation. So people attracted to media jobs are likely to go for the razzle-dazzle approach. The thoughtful approach would not gain new readers or viewers, just as not promising to fix a problem wouldn’t win you votes in elections.
Nicholas: Embrace the power of “and”. You are not wrong; there does appear to be a competition that continuously drives the narrative to more bizarre and grotesque claims, it’s like a never ending cycle that feeds upon itself. This is the one area where the sofa media actually exhibit some creativity; out smearing, out sneering, out blaming, out hallucinating, out fabricating…….. for first place in the resentment sweepstakes.
I sometimes wonder if this is the reason that the middle ground, the centrist solutions, have been cut out of public discourse.
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I am sure Andy ex Taiwan is right about generational turnover. But I suspect another reason is that dead tree journalists do much less news gathering than in t’olden days. They haven’t the budget for it. Therefore all they can do is stenography – copying stories from the BBC, NYT, Associated Press, Reuters etc, and of course government press releases. And those stories will (a) be framed from a lefty viewpoint and (b) will be stories the lefty agencies want to push (ie stories whose content might lead to right wing inferences will simply not be covered.)
The Mail operates on this stenography basis, but somehow it manages to find right wing stories as well as left wing ones, whch implies that Mail stenographers are trawling a wider pool of original sources. Perhaps such sources are considered too grubby by the Torygraph etc. Maybe the Mail sometimes even glances at Samizdata !