It’s your fucking duty. It’s why you got an ’estate’. You are a necessary facet of democracy but you need to do your part and act like it so you deserve the protections and benefits provided to you for doing so - like benefit of trust and access to politicians.
With few exceptions, you’re failing to be our eyes and ears and mouths and are instead mouthpieces for ownership and interests.
If it was just your job to make money take off the news armour (yeah you Fox) and stand naked in front of us as the liars you are.
Oof sorry. Got ranty there. It’s all getting to be too much.
Can you explain the “estate” thing like I’m a 5 year old non-American? (Only one of those is actually true, but I won’t say which one)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate
Just like within actual government there’s supposed to be balance of power between different branches or houses, there’s this idea that the role of the press is to hold governments accountable.
(More of an ELI12, but that’s the gist of the idea)
Sadly, I feel like the whole “separation of powers” thing is under attack in America and elsewhere as power continues to consolidate over time - even where it pertains to branches within government. Traditional media has long been lost in many cases, and even “alternative” media is so flooded with bad actors that it’s nearly impossible to get signal through the noise.
Not to get too dour, but if media is in this state now, I hate to think of where it will be once AI starts to gain a real foothold in our political discourse. I assume we’ll start to see the effects of this really become evident this years, with American federal elections ramping up.
The author Tim Wu makes a great argument about corporate power consolidation leading to fascism in his book The Curse of Bigness. He states that leading up to WWII, nations promoted the size of their respective national champions, which in turn led to pressure for an authoritative command economy to ensure their continued dominance. It’s a great read and dire warning for the world’s current state of affairs.
Interesting, I’ve never considered that factor. I’ll have to check it out!
France had 3 estates, The Nobles, The Clergy, and the Everyone Else. Another two got added by political theory people over time. Number 4 is the journalists. Number 5 is the alt journalists.
Is there a sixth? And please don’t say alt alt journalists, because that would be very disappointing.
Aliens, man
I thought it was dead people like the sense?
Indeed, and this estate makes its will known through representatives called “Estate Agents”
Are they even real?
Interesting, I had never heard of this! That explains that show “The Fifth Estate”. I’ll have to read up on this a bit, seems like useful knowledge.
We are still undergoing the French Revolution.
You know, I thought I could but on brief search it’s… complicated.
This is the best nugget from Wikipedia that sums up the general notion I’m trying to state that the media has been afforded a role in society - and that they aren’t acting as an independent class.
The modern term the fourth estate invokes medieval three-estate systems, and usually refers to some particular force outside that medieval power structure, most commonly the independent press or the mass media.[3][4]
This commertor summarised it well
“France had 3 estates, The Nobles, The Clergy, and the Everyone Else. Another two got added by political theory people over time. Number 4 is the journalists. Number 5 is the alt journalists.”
Hey little buddy, it’s time for your nap.
This exactly. Well ranted.
If Journalists point that out and report on it, then the Republicans will refuse their interviews and to come on their shows… and they much rather have the fall of democracy, than risk losing access.
Here in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we don’t have time to worry about the fall of democracy when the fall of ratings is on the line!
How will advertisers sell their keto gummy diet pills if no one is watching?
This is the paradox of liberalism.
You have blue MAGA outlets like NPR that spent the last 8 years being “fair” to both sides, telling their audience the antivax fascist psychopaths are just as valid and worthy as the left trying to give people education and healthcare.
As if conservative views are even worth recognizing.
Liberalism without a STRONG left wing always ends in fascism, and the liberals are more than happy to join the fascists (see: literally all liberal discourse on Lemmy).
Guess what the US has spent the past 80 years doing. Real coincidence every time a country leans left, they are overthrown by CIA puppets.
So now you have liberals in literal tears trying to get their guy elected without even fucking understanding the issues at play. They don’t give a shit.
Not all NPRs. Boston Public Radio, or at least Jim and Marjorie, the only time I ever heard them talking about antivaxers was when Art Caplan (a weekly regular…“American ethicist and professor of bioethics at New York University Grossman School of Medicine” per his Wikipedia) was tearing apart most of what they say.
But that’s more like a talk news show. You kind of expect a little bit less neutrality in that.
Art Caplan was also recently on an episode of Nova talking about ethics in modern medicine. Think it was actually about vaccination (may have been designer babies).
It’s a two party system, jabroni. If the liberals crying their tears don’t get their guy in office, who do you think DOES get into office?
newflash: Trump gets into office. Which must be your guy, right?
If you’re going to join conversations with people you might want to check your tone, as you could have the most sound argument ever but if you come across as a prick you’re going to turn people off your pov.
Be better my guy and talk to people how you would expect people to talk to your mother.
“bbbbut thuh Dems haven’t done anything to EARN my vote” and other such brain dead takes from ding dongs who don’t understand basic pragmatic logic.
Sadly they are the only voices trying to keep the Dems aim to the left.
Dems kept sliding right after coopting the middle with Clinton. Basically a Good Cop-Bad Cop routine.
Now there is no left, aside from Sanders.
Authoritarian to the left, fascist to the right, here we are.
If Sanders ever got the Presidency, leftists would drop him within 3 months.
Leftists want a unicorn, and they don’t exist. Until leftists realize this, they’ll be powerless. Leftism in America has spent 20 years eating itself, and now they’re surprised they have no power.
Sure, when Sanders was dominating the Democrats primary in 2016 we saw the entire county do a charachter assasination for a week straight.
It was the purest sign since Gove v Bush2 that the USA was no longer a republic nor a democracy.
AND the DNC went to court to make it explicitly clear in a court of law that voters and donors can suck a dick, we do what we want.
But “vote blue no matter who and move them left later (even though they only have ever moved right and attack anyone left of Biden WAYYYYY more than they ever have Republicans!)”
Leftist version of the Lost Cause
Your messiah didn’t have the votes. All the DNC shenanigans in the world don’t change that.
lol yeah, the whole concept of “earning” a vote screams unearned entitlement and narcissistic tendencies on part of the voter.
“The Dems aren’t liberal enough so I’m going to revenge vote tRuMp”
Removed by mod
Neither of us can convince someone whose friends had their asses beat by cops at a university protesting Biden’s action. Only Biden can do that, by ending the genocide.
When dems lose for not doing the things they need to do to get elected, are you going to blame the dems for not winning what should be an easy election by just doing the things the people want him to do, using all the means at his disposal, or are you going to blame every single voter in the US for not voting for a party that shows nothing but contempt for them?
Sure Biden has messed up with the protesters, but the Republican nominee Trump, would have had you shot.
Considering his cabinet has stated they actively had to dissuade him, several times, from simply ordering military elements to “gun down” protestors during the Floyd protests in 2020…yeah.
“what should be an easy election” <- this is how we know you are campaigning for Trump. There is no such thing as an easy election. Since 1992, Democrats have won the popular vote in 7 out of 8 elections, but that didn’t stop Bush from beating Gore, or Trump from beating Clinton.
lol, all your type does is talk about dems dems dems, not a single word about Republicans or how much worse they have proven to be when they are in office.
Trump said he would help Israel end the genocide, I guess that’s what you want after all, right?
Oh, so you’re still under the delusion the DNC did nothing wrong, and it’s the voters who were wrong for not voting harder.
Look at it this way: The democrats can change their own policy. They cannot change the psychology of the masses. No matter how much you yell at people for pointing it out, facilitating genocide, restarting student loans, letting Texas keep their child drowning fence, standing around while states ban abortion, are bad for electoral outcomes.
The republicans are psychopaths whose policies are bad for the material conditions of 99% of Americans. This has been true forever, but here we are, with dems somehow right of Richard Nixon. You have to have absolute dogshit policies for it to even be close, and that’s exactly what got us here. “Well trump might have restarted student loan payments but worse” isn’t gonna convince someone who is building up credit card debt now because they can’t balance rent, food, and student loan repayments.
I’m not under any delusions. ANY political party wielding power is going to make decisions that help some people and hurt others. It can’t be helped it’s the nature of power itself.
I’ll repeat, the Democrats have won the popular vote 7 out of 8 times since 1992. They have the more popular policies on their side, and only have to fight rhetoric like yours. What are you doing to help change the Democratic party, hm? Tea Party and MAGA have each managed to get their fucknuts into power and change the direction of the Republicans towards fascism. What’s your plan, how does whinging in comment section trying to create voter apathy towards the Dems do anything but put Trump in office?
In life, you have two mutually exclusive options: you can be right about something, or you can be effective. So you go ahead and keep on being the rightist guy in the room. The people who focus on being effective will manage to work around you.
The dems are on a trajectory to lose the election. Your tactic of pretending otherwise is both wrong and ineffective.
I am not trying to create voter apathy, I am trying to create anger to encourage people pressuring the dems to do the things they need to do to win.
my student loan repayments are currently $0 due to the SAVE repayment plan. the threat i currently face as a borrower in repayment comes from states suing the Biden admin in federal court to stop affordable repayment.
i see your propaganda. i hope others see it for what it is as well.
Yes I will blame the voters who think their pride is more important than the safety of others.
Dems lose? We all lose. You people seem to forget you’re fucking everyone. Your feelings don’t matter, outcomes do. If you know Trump wins in this scenario, and you know there may be no more free elections, how does this “force the Dems to learn for next time?” Braindead ideological bullshit. You’re a fucking cult.
Why the hell are you coming at me then? I can’t control the dems policies, nor can I change the psychology of muslims to vote for a guy who is facilitating genocide. Nothing I say would convince someone who is struggling to pay rent because their student loans were resumed by executive order.
The only thing either of us can do is pressure the dems to do the things they need to do to get elected. If Biden stops the genocide, then I could tell muslims “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump will resume it”, and college grads “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump will resume loan repayments”, and women “Hey, if you don’t vote Biden, Trump’s gonna remove your right to bodily autonomy” but I can’t do that because he doesn’t give me shit to work with.
One fucking Google search and this was the second link: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
That’s nice, but it’s really hard to convince someone to vote for the person still pushing the knife deeper into them. Stopping further damage done via gaza and student loans are an absolute minimum. I’m not even expecting him to pull the knife out, let alone do something to heal the wound. The bar is underwater when I have to set it at “Not actively making your personal material conditions worse”. “Yes he’s making things worse for you and will not stop doing so, but some of the things he did aren’t objectively bad” is not gonna win an election.
Also some of those were objectively bad, such as increasing militarism and oil production.
Sure but when Trump becomes president and you start to realise what you’ve done, don’t expect any help, sympathy, or even basic human decency.
Private Media’s duty is to the shareholders.
And if you look at who the big shareholders are voting for (and donating to and campaigning for) it’s the Trump GOP.
Sinclair Media, iHeartCommunications, News Corp, Amazon Media Group, Twitter…
These guys are lockstep with the conservative movement.
The end of democracy in the U.S. is not going to come from fascist conservatives, but from too-busy-with-life normies, the type who don’t vote in anything but presidential elections. They’re just too busy to notice anything other than their bills.
In their minds, they’re going to “punish” the blues for inflation while ignoring that the reds only ever made them poorer. These type of people don’t care about genocides (someone else’s problem, there’s always brown people dying, Israel is an ally etc), abortion rights (only stupid people get pregnant or only sluts need that), or trans people (that’s too weird for them). They don’t care about climate change (it’s a topic up for debate, it’s not factual), but have kids. They don’t care about workers rights, but work deadend or multiple jobs. They don’t care about getting more healthcare rights, but are a medical emergency away from bankruptcy.
I am not saying these people are dumb or callous, they need outreach and they need to be presented clearly with their options and outcomes. If you can, volunteer to sign people up to vote and present what’s at stake.
In my country, basically everyone accepts climate change, except perhaps the most conservative and those who already believe in conspiracy theories. What is going on in the US?
Those who believe in conspiracy theories have become our conservative party. Some (myself included) would argue they’ve always been there or that that’s always been the nature of the republican party. But the important thing here in the modern day is that the conspiracy theorists now control half of the country’s political system.
I’m personally of the opinion that conspiracy theory is the result of a fundamental unwillingness or inability to engage with reality. If that is the case then why on earth would you choose to believe in climate change? It’s scary, and an existential threat to humanity if it’s taken seriously. Besides, theres a lot of money to be made burning the planet.
I think at the end of the day that’s what the American right’s denial of climate change boils down to. Everyone in that party participates in some way in denying reality in favor of a collective fantasy. What’s one more denial?
Rings true, but the hard to swallow fact also is that they only think they’re “so busy with life” because they’re chasing the American pipe dream.
But but Biden didn’t personally go to Gaza to act as a human shield against Israeli shelling, so I don’t care if Trump wins!!
For those autists out there. The /s is pretty heavily implied. And we love you.
So he either did even remotely satisfactory in that regard or it’s not a really big deal, right?
He is still approving for weapons to be sent …
So, something the better journalists have to be careful with, is using neutral language even in certain clearly one-sided situations. That’s not just to not upset people on both sides; it helps to inform the truth to those who want to read carefully and critically.
If I read, “beware! The right-wingers are conspiring to make a fascist government!” then all I can do is shrug at another sensationalist conspiracy clickbait.
If I read factual details of things said, done and published by said right-wingers: it turns out I’m capable myself of seeing something is bad or good. Sure, it’s still the journalist’s job to interpret the facts to a degree, but those facts should be as transparent as possible and attaching inflammatory language, even if appropriate, often obscures that.
There is a place for opinion writers. But we need, I think, more of the less-opinioned honest truth for honest people. Even if that scares you that readers might not take up your call to arms as quickly as you think they ought.
Sorry, that went a bit off the rails, because I’m not quite sure how to express - though I still think it’s true - the important place for journalism that doesn’t call a spade a spade but tells you its shape so you can understand.
Absolutely - and I agree entirely. However - there are a lot of choices that get made with regards to words and context indicators when writing a piece (Video is a whole other box of frogs but similiar things apply).
Just sticking to text, let’s say, I’m not suggesting that the NYT should write a front page article entitled Watch Out: Crazy Trump Will Kill Us All (although, that’s upsettingly not a zero-percent chance either.)
What I am saying is that they need to stop giving trump the benefit of neutrality. That was a typical and to a small-extent-reasonable excuse they made in 2016. “Let’s see what kind of President he’ll be” and “maybe he’ll grow into it” and sorts of rationalizations that I ranted against at the time and I think was extremely validated by the subesquent nightmare of an administration.
So that’s over. Now, we know who he is - he’s the kind of guy who lies at the drop of a hat. He’ll do it by force of habit. He’s incapable of empathy. He’s so singularly focused on grabbing money (not ‘making money’ now, he doesn’t care about that), and weilding power over his perceived enemies that he’s an absolutely dismal choice for president. He staged a failed coup right in front of us. And still remains unrepentant. Anyone who’s not a complete cult member can see that.
So the NYT writing their article can use that to leverage his latest outrageousness and limit the faux-respect (he deserves none) such as “former President”. Fuck that - that’s not a “fact” as much as it is an “editorial position”. He’s also a former game show host. He’s also gone bankrupt five times. (four? five, whatever) He’s never been a billionaire. These are facts. They don’t use those. Why not.
Because. The tenor of the NYT is that they are “supposed” to be lofty - distanced - respectful. Well, they’re failing us with that. Trump is using that against them and us.
Maggie Haberman’s mom used to be trump’s publicist. And she’s the trump-whisperer? Fuck.
Same can be applied to any of the video-based services. (Minus the sniffly air of old money). I’ll try to use a future post to dive into one of the articles and really highlight it because once you see it, it’s pretty blatant they’re tipping the scales towards trump. It shouldn’t be close at all. It is because they’re doing that. On purpose.
Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it’s incredibly rare for there to be only two options.
Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.
The whole “both sides” reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly, so mainstream media frames all human subjects with political implications to match that polical system’s own artificially reduced set of choices so as to make it seem like that political system is well suited to deal with human subject with political implications.
(I’ve actually lived in a couple of countries with different levels of actual political freedom, from the UK which is a lot like US and arguably in some ways even less representative, to The Netherlans which has Proportional Vote, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that the way the established Press frames news closelly matches the limitations in political choices in that system)
Then if you go out of mainstream media and look at amateurs (i.e. social media posts) the way they frame subjects is also almost invariably like the Propaganda they grew up with, IMHO not because of them trying to be manipulative but because that’s all they’ve ever known and seen all around them, though the result is still that in their parroting of a sometimes more sometimes less rationalised version of somebody else’s talking points, they follow the same falacious structuring.
There are a handfull of less mainstream media who actually mostly practice Journalism and a few diamond-Journalist amongst the muck which is mainstream media, but generally well established news media will not stray away from a framing that justifies the very system that made them “established”.
Real Journalism is discussing the situation on its own implications, merits and demerits, and presenting options and explaining their pros and cons.
Agreed
The whole “both sides” reporting is an artifact of it being Propaganda in a system with a Power Duopoly
Both sides is a falacy since for most human subjects it’s incredibly rare for there to be only two options.
‘Both sides’ is also a shorthand for both or more. I like your description of “discussing the situation on its own implications…” but I think it’s common in human discourse to frame things in two main perspectives and discuss from there.
That’s because journalism has more or less lost all semblance of integrity, so it’s turned into “what cheap clickbait can I crap out today to maximize my clicks?” That’s why instead of the hard-hitting investigation and journalism we got with Watergate, we get “TRUMP = LITERAL NAZI, CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY”
Everything should be prefaced with the fact conservatives don’t think it’s possible they can lose.
Is this a meme?
It’s the truth
Sure. But i subscribed for memes. If I wanted simplified compressed political statements I would go to twitter.
Try posting it to woodworking or knitting if themes doesn’t matter.
nerd
100% THIS.
BoTh SiDeS has already gotten people killed!
Hahahah imagine expecting liberal media to stop fascism.
Liberalism creates the conditions of fascism; Capitalism tends towards crisis, eventually it must be buttressed by applying colonial methods at home.
Liberals always do everything they can to keep us on the path towards fascism, since socialism represents a greater threat to capitalism.
I’m so glad idiots like you are a joke to the silent majority, who will continue living free under liberalism long after fascism and communism are forgotten.
Have you been frozen since the 90s? All the proclamations that liberalism won and it was the end of history, and we’d just have technocratic tweaks to capitalism forever were wrong.
Capitalism tends towards crisis when it can’t expand its markets, it’s structural.
Hell this very post is about liberals being complicit with or facilitating the rise of fascism.
Because there’s nothing new under the sun, you can study the same dynamic in 1930s germany. The choice is socialism or barbarism, and the liberals choose barbarism every time.
I see a few people helping the fascists around here, and one of them is you.
Could you elaborate? I’m curious how you arrived at that conclusion.
lol OK kid
I just want to throw in here, that the ‘silent majority’ used to mean the dead.
* according to a comic I read on the internet, but meh, maybe I’ll look it up later
Wow, that’s very profound. Thank you for wisely using both of our time on that insight.
Social Democrat, here: Both of you people suck.
Don’t worry, you’re a ‘lib’ to all the self-proclaimed Very Pure Leftists.
to Those Leftists™, anyone thats left of them, right of them, or has identical political beliefs on everything except one issue are “libs”, its been thrown around so much on lemmy that it takes up the same part of my brain as “woke”, when I see someone use it unironically its generally safe to say I can ignore them.
Social democrats literally are liberals though; liberal is defined by support of capitalism, social democrats seek to buttress capitalism with social programs.
Not to be confused with Democratic Socialism, such as in Bolivia and and Venezuela, who aren’t liberals, nor are anarchists, or communists or various indigenous movements that are their own flavor of anti-capitalist.
Yeah, but I wasn’t replying to the social democrat. I can only go through seeing anarchists and communists be called lib so many times before feeling like the word liberal has lost all meaning and it just becomes another abstract insult
Where the hell do you see anarchists and communists get called lib?
Is it by republicans, who think liberal means anyone left of them and that communists are a type of liberal, and Mao’s Combat Liberalism was a pamphlet about doing liberalism, but really aggressively?
Those people are even dumber and more politically illiterate than the average blue maga.
If fascists are attempting a takeover of our government then it would be irresponsible for Biden to accept the results if he loses the election.
I read another stupid and dangerous take, look at the username, and of course.
I’m sorry I forgot we’re just supposed to let them win
On the other hand, this is all MSNBC talks about.
…why am I being downvoted?
Single party dictatorship is acceptable 🤣
Dude calls himself a fascist in his own comments
