My drug of choice, however, is X—though using it doesn’t really feel like much of a choice. I’m the editor of a daily politics-focused newsletter, where my duty is to provide readers with a more or less comprehensive digest of everything they need to know from the day’s news. On a normal day, the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is check X. The last thing I do before going to bed is check X. I browse X while I sip my morning coffee. Throughout the day, I take breaks from writing to see if anything new has hit X that I might need to incorporate into my writing. After I’m done for the day, I keep monitoring X throughout the evening to get ahead of the next day’s stories. When I try to ignore X and source my writing from the “mainstream” press, I inevitably find that The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal has omitted some critical piece of context without which it is impossible to truly understand the story. If I take too much time away from X—on weekends, for instance—I inevitably find I lose the thread of the news, and have to work doubly hard on Monday to catch up.
– Park MacDougald (£) in an article about actual drugs of the performance enhancing kind.
Yes – even the supposedly conservative parts of the media, such as the Wall Street Journal, either ignore much of the news (the parts that the establishment do not like), or even push leftist establishment lies themselves.
Too many people at the Wall Street Journal or Fox News are “School of Journalism” types – indoctrinated in a certain way of working (relying on press releases – rather than seeking out the truth, “on the streets”, for themselves) and a certain view of the world.
This is why alternative sources of news are vital – but one must be careful of them, as they may also be unreliable.
For example, I was astonished when Rupert Murdoch fired Tucker Carlson – who was number one in the ratings. Then Mr Carlson started coming out with stories (which he claimed to believe) about Space Aliens landing in the United States, and then about Jews supposedly ruling the United States and slaughtering Muslim women and children for fun (Mr Carlson even claimed that Jews boasted of doing such things) – in short Rupert Murdoch had seen something in Mr Carlson that the viewers on his old Fox News show had not seen, that there was either an extreme dishonesty in Mr Carlson – or (and this is also possible – and we should have sympathy if it is true) that Mr Carlson was starting to suffer from a mental illness.
It is a similar story with Candice Owens – once also a respected alternative voice who (and this is forgotten now) broke some stories that had been covered up – tragically now Candice Owens goes around saying the Moon landings were faked and that the wife of the President of France is really a man.
So be careful of the establishment mainstream – but also be careful of alternative voices, as dissent (doubting the establishment line) can, sometimes, topple over into madness.
In short – the establishment press releases may indeed be a pack of lies, but what you hear (as an alternative “citizen journalist”) “on the street” may also be a pack of lies.
And I am not immune from being conned myself.
Part of the problem is that people who make their name uncovering an establishment cover-up are always looking for the next “scoop”.
They dread the question “what you found out last year was incredible – but what have you found out this year?”
The temptation to just go with incredible seeming stories (especially from previously good sources) can be too great.
But, most certainly, such people are vital – as the establishment media (including the supposedly conservative parts of it) leave out much of the news – and often wildly distort the news they do report.
When your primary income source relies on constant engagement (likes, retweets, etc) ,the temptation to resort to slop, sensationalism. and outright fake news must be very great. I’ve stopped using the ‘For you’ tab on Twitter because it’s just wall to wall slop accounts.