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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Why do so many Americans get their news from British newspapers? This is why. Today’s Daily Mail:
“Nothing to see here: How most of the left-leaning US media totally ignored Biden’s Air Force One stumble – while the foreign press did their job for them”
The Mail’s Keith Griffith writes,
Major left-leaning U.S. press outlets are largely avoiding mention of President Joe Biden’s repeated stumbles as he boarded Air Force One, while many foreign publications are devoting prominent coverage to the incident.
As of Friday afternoon, the homepages of MSNBC, CBS News, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and New York Times had no mention of Biden’s stumbling incident earlier in the day at Joint Base Andrews.
and
In contrast to the lack of interest in Biden’s stumbles, mainstream U.S. outlets heavily covered an incident last year, in which Trump took mincing baby-steps down a ramp at West Point, which he later explained was ‘very slippery.’
Although Trump did not stumble during the incident, it sparked rampant speculation about his health and criticism over his capacities, including from Biden himself.
‘Look at how he steps and look at how I step,’ Biden said in September 2020, in a clip featured on CNN. ‘Watch how I run up ramps and he stumbles down ramps. OK? Come on.’
If you want to follow Mr Biden’s own advice and compare Trump to Biden on Trip Advisor, the indefatigable New York Post is one of the few US papers with clips of both.
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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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There’s a reason why my local rag, the Miami Herald, is often variously referred to as Pravda on the Bay and the Miami Daily Worker. Their non-reporting of certain stories, definitely in the public interest, is almost soviet-like.
The FBI have not ruled out the involvement of White Suprematists.
Err, No!
‘Trip Advisor‘, ha ha!
How piss poor is the US media when the Daily Mail is seen as reputable?
Are we allowed to notice or comment on the ownership and management of said US media?
Guilty, here. I read UK news sources, I didn’t know I was part of a trend. I can tell you that during the early days of the pandemic, it was a relief to listen to Bojo etal.
The American media was so obsessed with Trump gotchas that they were impossible to take seriously.
There was a period during which i got the news only, or almost only, from British media: The Economist once a week, the BBC and FT irregularly.
That includes the time that i spent in North America.
Now i don’t even know if The Economist and the FT are still published. (Just joking…)
But i do look at the BBC with morning coffee.
Mostly, i get the news from Instapundit, Samizdata, and Breitbart Europe.
So there is still a substantial British input into my mind.
PS: Interesting that Brits don’t have to look at American media to get uncensored British news!
Our domestic media headed by the bbc is perfectly capable of its own censoring – which it does with considerable relish. Just to be fair the bbc censors your news as well.
The New York Post covers a lot of stories the MSM won’t. They’ve been banned from digital media quite a few times for it. They’re running the tale of Biden’s unfortunate trip right now.
Just follow news sources that aren’t interested in censoring the same stories as everybody else.
British newspapers are far from perfect – but there is some choice among them.
Most of the United Stats media, like the FBI and other government agencies, is just Collectivist propaganda.
Nothing they report, not on the 2020 election, not on historic American temperature figures, not on Early Treatment of Covid 19, not on violent crime (where they pretend that murders are racially motivated when they are NOT), nothing (nothing) most of the American media report can be trusted – they are lying “Woke” propagandists who serve the vast government and the pet Corporations.
When Mr Murdoch dies (and he is 90 years of age) the New York Post and Fox News will go the same way as the rest of the American media. Outside the editorial pages (and they are NOT wonderful) even the Wall Street Journal is not very good – it can not be, because it has to appeal to the Corporate types.
I doubt that the left will even have to rig elections any more – as most Americans will have no real access to dissenting opinions (yes there is Talk Radio, but “Cancel Culture” is coming for that, and few people get to see such television stations as “One America News”). The United States will finish “transitioning” to become a totalitarian country.
Schrodinger’s Dog – as you know well, the Miami Herald would sell more copies if it reported stories the left do not want reported.
However those who control it DO NOT CARE about sales – this is normal for the American news media, and the entertainment media, and (indeed) for the Corporations generally.
This is a situation which Milton Friedman feared – he stressed the traditional legal view that a Corporation is like a trust, that is there is maximise shareholder value, for a very good reason. This reason being that if Corporations lose sight of the objective of profits from CUSTOMERS they will destroy society – it really is as bad as that.
The Corporations no longer care about profits from customers – if they care about long term profits at all (and many of them do NOT) they see profits as coming from government and the banking-and-financial system (essentially one and the same now – as the banks and so on, totally depend on funny money from the government, NOT Real Savings – capitalism without capital), not from customers.
The Corporate Class are “Woke” to the core – the products of an education system, including the Business Schools, that was corrupted long ago.
At least some of the US media sites block European readers with a 451 Error or equivalent block page, mostly because of GDPR issues.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/25/business/media/europe-privacy-gdpr-us.html
As for a specific reason the American media is so bad – the “Schools of Journalism” are that reason.
When the 1st Amendment was written there was no such places – and newspapers and other publications were openly expressions of opinion.
The Schools of Journalism started to emerge in the late 19th century – and the cult of the an “unbiased” “objective” “scientific” media pushing the cause of “Social Reform” (see the CONTRADITION there – “unbiased”, “objective” but pushing an AGANDA of “Social Reform”) gained a stranglehold in the 20th century – today the Collectivism is more extreme (and more DISHONEST) than every before, most of the media really are down-on-all-fours like the “Justice” Department and other Collectivist scum.
APL,
You noticed my joke. You are my friend.
Ellen,
Yes, the New York Post is an exception – and has been punished for the crime of committing journalism with its reporting on Hunter Biden. That is what I meant when I described the NYP as “indefatigable”.
John Galt,
I believe that now the UK is out of the EU, the GDPR blocks on certain US newspapers ought to be lifted for British readers soon. But maybe it’s too difficult for them.
Paul Marks,
I hope you are wrong, but fear you may be right. The fact that when media outlets go woke they become boring might save us yet.
General comment,
There are some facts and figures out there about the remarkable penetration of British newspaper websites into the US market. But with a dose of Astra Zeneca’s finest coursing through my veins I don’t have the energy to look them up.
The rot goes far beyond self serving, half assed work product and reckless cherry picking and projection. Of course journalism, as a profession, has been decomposing for years, in the USA, Trump was just the catalyst for the final implosion. If you have not seen Sharyl Attkisson’s take down of journalism, don’t miss it. She documents the Trump hate in a short, crisp, and coherent presentation, including the media’s obfuscation when they are caught with their pants down. Slanted Journalism and the 2020 Election | Sharyl Attkisson – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6qA2l678as
I hope we all know how the game is played; the loaded question (when did you stop beating your wife?), false accusations, cherry picking the stories, exaggerated headlines disconnected from any substance, the pretense that they can discern motivation and private thoughts, deceptive editing of video, presenting rumors and gossip as facts, manufactured anonymous sources, suppression of anything exculpatory, deliberate misinterpretation of statements, totally fabricated quotations, every story slanted in the most negative way with negative adjectives, adverbs and verbs, constant gotchas and efforts to bait the target. The latest scam is “fact checking”, what a joke.
Over time the news people have been replaced with advocates. They are not contrite over the gutting of professional standards, because they are not professionals. By their lights, they have been quite successful.
My last pet peeve. We’ve all noticed that much of the news coverage is about the news. Too often, news people and the media have made the story about themselves in what passes for news.
Oh, and yeah, emotional tribalism makes the most money and draws the most clicks.
I am afraid that i did not get the ‘trip advisor’ joke.
An unrelated remark: as usual, Paul Marks is good on diagnosis, utterly gloomy on prognosis, and short on prescription.
Enlightenment is at hand 😉
Natalie – I also I hope I am wrong.
bobby b – “I thought Trump would win”.
He did win.
The extreme rigging of the 2020 election has one good consequence – it should open the eyes of more people to just how utterly corrupt the system (the culture) has become.
Snorri – you are correct.
My prescription tends to be of the Japanese soldier in 1945 (and long after – in some cases) sort.
I do not really have any hope – I just struggle on.
Media of any sort is not an inexpensive occupation. I’ve occasionally wondered how these operations keep going. Over that last four years I’ve heard how CNN’s ratings have fallen through the floor, surely this has an impact on their ad revenue. Yet, they carry on …
Hearing how many billions the Biden crime syndicate,or in its heyday the Clinton foundation had managed to cream off US overseas aid, I rather think ‘overseas aid’ may be being recycled and used to fund keep these enemy operations going.
Pleased to hear it.
One of the reasons for the first impeachment freakout was that billions of USAID funding to Ukraine was stolen via cronies at the State Dept.
It was the potential exposure of that, not the ham-fisted Biden grifting that scared them so.
Flubber,
Source? Link?
I agree. Indeed a mass repeal of all the invasive foreign legislation introduced by Brussels should be enacted, but not likely under this “Tory” government.
From what I can see from here in England, the US media won’t even speculate if Biden will still be President in the Fall. In the UK, the Telegraph put the staggering news on the front page of its website almost instantly but, crickets from the BBC until about 3 hours later, when an article surfaced on their US and Canada section of their news site, reporting it in bland terms.
It’s not just that the mainstream media won’t report things, they also put a gloss on things.
A less known fact is that the excellent tunein radio app, previously my go-to for US sport and talk radio, was hamstrung early last year by a UK court decision (in response to Sony’s copyright concerns) blocking access to US content. The EU malaise has well and truly spread.
An unrelated remark: as usual, Paul Marks is good on diagnosis, utterly gloomy on prognosis, and short on prescription.
I don’t think Paul’s ever been short on anything. 😉
Hair? 🙂
APL – there are many ways they, the Corporations, struggle on.
Asset stripping is one way – they care only for the short term (the money the hired managers can “earn”) the long term is not their concern.
IP is another way – people can debate patents and copyrights, but a company like Disney that depends on every longer extensions of Copyright is intellectually dead – relying on past glories.
But most importantly there are subsidies – Corporations subsidise “Woke” projects, like all those leftist books (Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, K. Harris – all presented as if they were wonderful) in the supermarkets thousands of miles away from the country (the United States) which these corrupt Collectivists live in – and have such a deep HATRED of.
But the Corporations are themselves subsidised – by local, State and Federal government (all those adds and sweet heart contracts) and by the endless CREDIT MONEY of the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England – and so on.
John Galt – I am indeed bald on top, but I more than make up for it with all the hair on my back and upon my mighty belly.