Donald Trump is doing all he can to discredit the media. Yesterday, the White House press secretary Sean Spicer (obviously Russian lineage) insisted that the crowd for Trump’s inauguration was the biggest ever. Photographs show that he’s lying, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. If he can insert a question mark into people’s heads then his boss’s tweets will become a little bit more credible, until eventually they become more trusted than the mainstream media.
That’s ironic, because many people here have complained about the way the mainstream media report events. During the Troubles, for example, it was common practice for newspapers to take a description of an event straight from the RUC or the British Army, and print it as fact. More recently, we’ve had journalists who consider it part of their function to ask politicians (yes you’re right, Virginia, just one) when they’d last been to confession.
Which brings us to the shooting of that PSNI officer last night. We’re told that it was dissident republicans, and so it may well have been. But we don’t know. It could have been a loyalist shooting, or an undercover group from the British Army, or some mavericks who happened to get their hands on a weapon. The dissident angle is probably right but not necessarily, and our only information comes from the police. And police, as we’ve discovered in the past, can spin a web of lies.
It’s an odd position we find ourselves in. Social media have become more and more important, and Trump looks as though he’s working to make them more important still, thus diminishing mainstream media. Ironically, at the same time, many of us have become aware of interviews which ask one-sided questions, newspapers that concentrate on vilifying one political party, what amounts to gentle brain-washing of the general public. So Trump’s move to give muscle to social media in opposition to mainstream reporting should be a good thing.
Except that social media, like most instruments, can be used for good or ill. Our mainstream media should present the verified facts of an event. Those using social media need to avoid the temptation to lambast politicians or political parties because their granny was once snubbed by that party or they don’t like the look on the face of one of its politician. I’m all for giving greater influence to social media, but only if it’s to truly democratize the reporting of events, not to spin them in a 1984 way, ignoring factual evidence.
Awkward conversations? Here’s an awkward question we should all ask ourselves when we make a claim: how do I know that?
Using social media as your source for news and information also has the dangerous effect of only exposing you to viewpoints that are concurrent to your own. All the tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Instagram etc use algorithms that present us with news and content that we have already showed a predisposition to favour. This way we become more likely to click into content thus generating greater advertising revenues for these companies. This leaves us in a self reinforcing bubble which does us the disservice of not exposing us to the alternative view. Hardly a good thing.
On the Trump fella, well it’s certainly going to be a interesting few years. His press secretaries statement about the crowd sizes seem petty and childish to me.
He has broken his first campaign promise anyway. Hilary is definitely not going to jail. Now let’s see if this wall materialises.
Trump ran a campaign on lies.
Seemingly he’s now continuing that while in office.
Only the deluded would have expected any different.
Scott
The dangers of confirmation bias using social media are obvious as you point out.
The mainstream media have their problems too and promote their own agenda, and we know that agenda is a worldwide conspiracy against Sinn Fein!
It leaves you wondering what to believe on the whole.
Oh dear. Trust you, gio, to lower the debate to a sniping match
It’s called a joke Jude
Is that what it is? You should have SAID, gio…
Don’t make me start using smiley faces!
“It’s called a joke Jude.”
Stick to the day job, Gio, because, as a comedian, you’d die of starvation.
This is an outrage.
I refuse to go to the back of the bus for anyone.
The bad old days of ‘gio lie down’ are gone forever.
(smiley face)
“The bad old days of ‘gio lie down’ are gone forever”
Now, now Gio, don’t you be getting too uppity, we’ll have none of that nonsense on this blog 😉
“Using social media as your source for news and information also has the dangerous effect of only exposing you to viewpoints that are concurrent to your own”
There is no danger of that in the mainstream media Scott?….The Newsletter is one very obvious example of a mainstream media outlet only expressing viewpoints that are concurrent to a specific section of our community. I don’t even think the Newsletter has one single Nationalist columnist. Whereas the Irish News has Unionist commentator Alex Kane as a columnist and a few others, I believe. One look at the columnists on the Belfast Telegraph tells you which way they like to view things.
When it comes to mainstream media and social media, people have a choice of what they read and also what they believe.
If ever there was “a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard”…that would be Donald Trump, a bombastic , misogynistic liar with no intellectual attributes or real insight .He will proceed to turn America into an isolationist state but it will not solve the problems of the uneducated citizens whose jobs are being stolen by the encroaching technology. People are needed less and less in factories, banks and supermarkets. where automation is doing the bulk of the work. It is in the service industries where they are seeking jobs and these are still the lowest paid ones.
There is still much latent racism inherent in his plans and that is a huge factor in conservative , American small towns. He has tapped into that, just as he has tapped into the macho, mad survivalists and gun-hicks that the likes of Sarah Palin was supported by. It will be an interesting few years ,but no matter what he does , I doubt that anyone in world politics or the world press, will really take him very seriously .It will be four years of increasingly volatile demonstrations against him wherever he goes. There are too many potential scandals to trip him up which will keep the pot boiling, so he might even be impeached at some point, if he isn’t assassinated by some nut from either side before that . There’ll be noise , the like of which has not been seen since the days of Nixon or Spiro Agnew. No matter the lies he and his people will tell, it will be evident at every turn the contempt he will be held in .If he does walkabouts anywhere in Europe or America it will be a nightmare for the security. The Office of President of the United States might never recover.I believe he will do it a greater disservice than any other President in the history of the United States. He’ll never be able to control the media anyway . The one thing he has done is to properly politicise and divide a generation, but it will be essentially back to the 1960s of division where half the population are facing down the other half….towns and families in total dissaray.
On Saturday, the Off-Broadway hit play, The Vagina Monologues, Esteemed Blogmeister, finally transferred to the On-Washington Open-air Theatre, bigly.
.
Egged on as it was by the Dworkin-class dominated media – led by CNN – it was adjudged a smash-hit, a sure fire Antonia winner by the Misses Andrews of the sanctuary studios, as befitted the real V-Day.
On Friday, The Drama Queens of TV on both sides of the Atlantic, queued up to take their cue from the dowdily dressed, disapproving brick-red Aunt Jemina ensemble of Madame Michelle Obama (unelected).
Her glum expression gave the impression of a plantation cook who had just lost her cornbread recipe– and prompted her twittering followers to give the theatrical thumbs down to the Inauguration Day crowd, which they judged to be way, way down on the previous crowds, bigly. That most dependable of Monday Morning quarterbacks being, indubitably, on their side: Kodak Mo.
The thumbs down by the Telly Babies being,ironically, the essential digital act of the (selected) social media.
The subtlety (!) of the dress statement was matched by the unintended irony of the music, something which was seemingly missed by the hissy-dissy gender neutral Madames of the Media :
That would be the exuberant marching band rendition of the stirring John Philip Sousa, Uasal -composed trouser-stripe toon (gulp) The Washington Post.
Missy Kathie Kaye, the despondent Washroomington Correspondent for BBC World Service had her say:
-Miaowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
The BBC, btw,are THE best broadcasting outfit in the biz: we must take them at their word, their purred word. As the Leprechaun has it:
-Ar mhaithe léi féin a dhéanann an cat cronán.
The (yawn, stretch, trouser –stripe cough) Derivatives of the Dublin monovocal media duly parroted the CNN with their chewing gum commentary, Wrigley.
On his show this very morning, the easily-irked Sean O Rourke, he who replaced the irreplaceable and equally easily-irked Pat Kenny cauterized the SPADs of The Donald as ‘his henchmen and his henchwomen’.
Hmmm.
Memo to one’s self: : must fact-check how sorehead SOR refers to the SPADs of Paddy Land, e.g., the pin-striped blaggers like the late, lamented PJ Marionette who did to the press what CJ Jockey did to him: whipped them into obedient puppets on a string.
There will be plenty of Time and possibly, Newsweek, to put the stiletto – and deservedly so – into The Donald – from his cheerleading of the Israeli imperialists to his jeering at those whose Dad wasn’t the awash-with-dosh Fred Trump – but for the mo, be it sufficient unto the day, that his Lá has chuckied.
THE PRESS-IDENCY PUT on HOLD
Those French, les henchmen of sophists
Say les femmes are Nature’s own bosses
The adorable celebs
V deplorable plebs ?
Thus, the Ovary Office must count its losses.
Comhghairdeas ,Michelle. Go maire tú agus go bhfeice tú Éire Nua.
Like him or loathe him Trump has a point about the main media and the lies, sorry, narrative they propagate. Personally from what he saw on T.V there were plenty of people at his inauguration. The main news media is fast losing its credibility:
https://www.sott.net/article/340388-MSM-caught-faking-inauguration-crowd-size-as-CNNs-president-warns-Trump-his-network-will-deliberately-discredit-him
Of course there were plenty of people at it. I think what gets up people’s nose is the claim it was the biggest ever and the why the administration got stuck in about this unimportant issue.
There are lots of reasons why the turn out wasn’t as large as some others – weather, work commitments etc.
It also has nothing to do with undermining him – he was elected after all – a movement, it is claimed.
MSM tells lies sometimes, Trump tells lies sometimes, people on Facebook tell lies sometimes.
The US administration have been a bit ‘snowflakey’ over this non issue.
“There are lots of reasons why the turn out wasn’t as large as some others – weather, work commitments etc.”
I have heard claims on social media that Washington DC police urged Trump supporters to turn back and avoid the anti Trump supporters and in some cases the police didn’t let them get to the Capitol. Anybody who has ever encountered the RUC on their way to a protest can testify as to how state forces can be quite obstructive and determined to stop you from attending an event they don’t like.
‘The main news media is fast losing its credibility’.
Can you remember when the news media last had any credibility?
For all of my life newspapers, radio, and latterly TV, have all been government or political mouthpieces.
In fact one of our local papers would be out of business without its DUP subsidy!
I was tweeting on twitter last night when that PSNI officer was shot. A Unionist, who I often tweet with, tweeted me suddenly and said how awful this was. I agreed with him but wanted to know who was behind this. My Unionist friend was incredulous that I even asked that. Of course Republicans were behind it. Automatically. No trial or Jury. Guilty as Charged. Get the Noose ready.
Another Unionist tweeted me. This particular guy makes our MT come across balanced and fair minded. This guy wasn’t just blaming Republicans but all of the nationalist community. Oh yes, ALL nationalists were to blame for this, not just those who pulled the trigger. I calmly debated with this guy and said, by his own logic, does that mean all Unionists are to blame for UVF/UDA activities, drug dealing, shootings, etc? My vile friend was OUTRAGED at such a suggestion. His logic, I learnt over 2-5 minutes, was: All Catholics were to blame for Republican paramilitaries. But that collective blame didn’t extend to all Protestants for UVF/UDA actions.
I clicked onto his twitter account to check out his other tweets and behold! he was getting his information from social media, from his own brand of social media, of course. There were many other people blaming all Catholics for the shooting of this PSNI officer. There were also very dangerous tweets from some calling for “action” due to this shooting….and we all know what that means….
When you think about it, in many ways Social Media and Mainstream Media aren’t that different. My uncles always buy the Irish News. That’s the paper they like and it usually reflects a Nationalist viewpoint. I often buy the Andersonstown News on a Thursday, again a largely Nationalist viewpoint. I’m sure the Newsletter’s biggest buyers are Unionists, again because it reflects a Unionist point of view.
Unfortunately Social Media works the same way. Most Nationalists will only follow and believe what other Nationalists say online. Most Unionists will only follow and believe what other Unionists will say online. The vast majority only believe what they want to believe. Only a few are interested in a fair and balanced view of things, aka the Truth. That’s not to say Nationalist/Unionist newspapers never tell the truth, frequently they may do but with a Green or Orange twist often added.
Maybe its not the media in general that’s the problem, maybe the issue is in peoples heads….
PS: its strange how this shooting has took place on the Eve of an Election, just when some DUP Members are saying they have relatives who have benefitted from the RHI scheme. A nice little distraction this shooting has become. As one Nationalist tweeted last night: “MI5 Handlers getting their agents out doing a bit of shooting to deflect from RHI”. Maybe so, maybe so…..