Conspiracy theories happen whether the media is trustworthy or not. They existed many hundreds of years before there was mass media.
There's just something about certain people that makes their brains click, "That logical thing doesn't make sense to me. But this crazy thing does. And I need to tell everyone about it."
The internet has enabled the third part of that like never before.
Before the internet, it was whackjobs in online fora. Before that they were on BBSes. Before that, shortwave radio. Before that, books, pamphlets, fly posters, leaflets, and handbills. Before that, they would just stand on street corners shouting.
Most of the non-electronic methods still exist and are used frequently. From the guy with the megaphone walking around the Chicago Loop bitching about the FBI in his brain to Screamin' Jesus on the street corner of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
The promise of the internet was to give everyone an "equal voice." We probably should have solved mental health first.
The people with the most accurate view of reality lie somewhere in the middle and do the critical thinking for themselves. The reality is that conspiracies do and always have existed, and the mainstream today is very different than the mainstream 100 years ago, which was different 100 years prior, etc. (because those mainstreams were proven wrong on many levels, as our current one will be).
Ask yourself honestly: would you have been on the side of the Catholic Church in the Galileo inquisition, had you lived in that time with your personality?
On the other side, would you have been a patron of the charlatan John Taylor had you lived in his time? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(oculist)
Back in the 60s after John F Kennedy was murdered, there were two broad schools of thought; that he had been murdered by a man acting alone (no conspiring) or he was murdered by a man[men] acting in coordination with others (conspiring.) Thus in this case you had people who believed the official narrative, and everybody else, who had theories "about conspiracies." This particular case seems to have been strong enough to effectively redefine the term "conspiracy" to mean any theory contrary to the official narrative.
The problem is that in other cases, such as 9/11, the official narrative is a theory about a conspiracy. As are all of the alternative theories. In the case of something like 9/11, literally everybody agrees the numerous perpetrators conspired with each other; the disagreement arises over who exactly those conspirators were. In the 'proper' sense of the term "conspiracy theory", everybody believes at least some conspiracy theories. But in this new modern sense of the term, "conspiracy theory" applies to only to those who contradict the officially endorsed explanation of events.
(Incidentally in the specific case of JFK, only a minority of Americans believe the official one-man narrative: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-one-thing-in-politi... Was it the mafia, the CIA, the Russians? Somebody else? Who fucking knows. But most people don't believe Oswald acted alone.)
The problem is trust, and many of the world's governments and corporations (I would probably argue most) have proven to be unworthy of the public trust.
Really sad bonus thought: If you see what happened in the aftermath of 9-11, and look at how much money is made from warfare - how much of a stretch do you think it is for an otherwise typical person to believe it's an inside job?
This is why I don't watch the news anymore.
I would say some of the things that he premised on was true. But the idea he developed base on those things are nuts. it's not how he communicated them, it's just what it is.
(example not necessarily from Alex Jones, but just e.g)
US flag furled up on the moon (correct) -> like the wind blew on it (visual observation) -> it means the wind must have blown on it (fallacy) -> we never went to the moon.
Jet fuel cannot melt steel (maybe? correct) -> Therefore the fire it had on the world trade center cannot cause structural failure (does your chocolate not soften before it melts?) -> US did 911.
The premise can be true, the idea can still be bs.
There is a ~40min video in my profile that is just footage from the day and mainstream technical talks afterwards.
That's not an ordinary difference of political opinion. One side or the other is engaging in conspiracy-theory thinking, at a vast level. (Or, I suppose, both.) I don't just mean that they're talking about a conspiracy, but applying all the hallmarks of paranoia, shifting goalposts, and bad faith that mark conspiracy theorists.
And that's just one example. It applies down the line, of many issues. This is the one that perhaps illustrates it best, but it's not mere partisanship. It's people needing to be "brought back to earth", as you said, but at a level involving many millions of people.
That's the kind of talk that leads to re-education camps.
I'm also not proposing solutions. I'm sure there are many who would propose re-education camps -- that, too, is an indicator of the magnitude of the problem.
I'm actually quite short on ideas for solving it.
This idea that you're only allowed a platform once you've been "fixed" is exactly what pushes people towards conspiracy theories in the first place. It's a reaction to authoritarian mono-culture.
Unfortunately they wasted their credibility over the years and can’t be trusted to be reasonably unbiased and without agenda.
The useful part of the debate today is if there is a responsibility for those who have ended up as potential gatekeepers to either help promote those people or to limit their audience by moderating platforms. Historically, the unhinged got distributed only as far as they could personally manage to coordinate; should we be handing bullhorns out to everyone? Free speech vs personal responsibility vs whatever other buzzword you like.
It's like how PBS has been pounding in its promos for the last few months that "We're a country divided like never before." Well, not really.
Yes, American politics is terrible now, but it's nothing like back in the 1800's. Posting some of the campaign literature that was distributed back then would get you banned from any modern electronic medium today.
I mean, I saw an anti-vaxxer post from social media that unknowingly suggested "a small piece of a virus instead of toxic chemicals" as an alternative to vaccines...
I thought the rest of the main stream doesn't lie and if they realize what they reported is wrong they retract and issue and correction/apology as needed.
My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox, right wing talk radio and more so Trump now to discredit the good institutions and to bring their trust level down.
In the buildup to the 2003 war, the New York Times published a number of stories claiming to prove that Iraq possessed WMD. One story in particular, written by Judith Miller, helped persuade the American public that Iraq had WMD: in September 2002 she wrote about an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes which the NYT said were to be used to develop nuclear material.[83] It is now generally understood that they were not intended (or well suited) for that purpose but rather for artillery rockets.[84] The story was followed up with television appearances by Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice all pointing to the story as part of the basis for taking military action against Iraq.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
It was bad reporting that was compounded by the editors not pushing back, as the article you cite goes on to say.
I don't see being lied to as much of an excuse. It's their job to be skeptical, and they chose not to be.
The NYT got something wrong! 17 years ago! And that's why... OP no longer believes in globular world theory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...
* Harvey Weinstein was covered up by many in the media as detailed in Ronan Farrow's Pulitzer Prize winning piece in The New Yorker [1]
* ABC killed a story about Jeffery Epstein in 2015 in part to retain access to the royal family. Epstein continued to sex traffic children for 3 years after this report would have aired [2]
* The BBC covered up for Jimmy Savile's pedophila (and other horrors I won't reprint here) for decades. The head of the BBC during that time left right before the scandal came to light to become the current CEO of The New York Times [3]
There are many other examples but these are recent and well documented.
1. https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/from-aggressive-ove...
2. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/abc-news-amy-robach-jeffrey-e...
3. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/30/jimmy-...
And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
> And a large part of Ronan's story was to try how this worked. It wasn't that the people who knew (to varying degree) did not want to out him. They just feared for their livelihood, and sometimes more.
Correct, but my statement was about media trustworthiness. It doesn't really matter if people are keeping quite because they want to or because there's some super powerful individual that's coercing them to keep quiet, the result for the audience is the same. Why believe outlets that are covering up for the most heinous corruption and crimes imaginable? The media has a well earned reputation problem.
Also, I'm not sure why you want to make this a partisan argument. It's not, there's plenty of corruption to go around. I deliberately chose non-political examples of corruption.
Edit: source for the downvoters [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Brazile#Sharing_debate_q...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/01/07/nick-s...
No, you aren't missing anything. No one says that CNN as a whole committed a grand conspiracy to assist Hillary with questions. However, each one of those "rogue CNN contributors" reflects poorly on the company as a whole, and the image of the whole media outlet as trustworthy suffers.
CNN still up to the same tricks too. How did you like "Mr. Sanders, why did you say a woman can't be elected president?" "I never said that." "Senator Warren, how did you feel when Mr. Sanders told you a woman couldn't be president?". What the hell was that?
The Seth Rich conspiracy theory[1] has no factual basis in reality. It's a political smear to muddy the waters most likely started by Russian propagandists as cover to their hacking in our 2016 elections.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Conspiracy...
If you think the "main stream doesn't lie" you are extremely naive
https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1220758756071497728?s=...
^ Wrong in terms of facts, bias, what they choose to report and choose to omit, who they cite as experts, and other aspects
Look up every war we've been involved in. The media/establishment lied. Try Nayirah testimony if you want to get started. If you want more recent, look up the anti-venezuelan NYTimes piece by Joanna Hausmann, a minor youtuber. Why was she given a platform on the NYTimes? Oh because her father is an ousted former venezuelan central banker behind the coup attempts in venezuela. Did NYTimes mention this? Of course not. But then again, what more do we expect from the NYTimes which supported the first coup of Chavez. Why is an "objective" newspaper behind a coup attempt in a foreign country? Because the NYTimes was founded by bankers to support bankers interests.
Go look up the lies the media peddled on the syria war and the chemical attacks. Notice how they went quiet about that?
Look up the libya war. Look at the lies peddled about venezuela.
> My impression is the whole "media is lying" is a narrative furthered by Fox
That's because you watch too much CNN/MSNBC or read too much NYTimes/WashingtonPost. You have that impression because you've been brainwashed ( just like the poor fox news viewers you pity ). You aren't any better than what you disdain.
The "media is lying" is as old as the country.
"As for what is not true you will always find abundance in the newspapers." – Thomas Jefferson
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." – Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was a free speech proponent who hated the lying press.
We even have a famed period in history named for the lying press and journalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
These predate fox news by more than a hundred years. You can generally trust the media to tell the truth about innocuous or unimportant events. The media, especially the highly regarded ones, lie about important events.
So if you are getting important news from dyspotian 1984 sounding "authoritative sources", know that you are being lied to.
I don't intend to bring too much cynicism in here, but if you outright believe any media in current year, whether mainstream or alternative, you are being misled. Everyone has an agenda.
I think there's a general and growing distrust of media that feeds into people like Alex Jones' popularity. I don't know how many of those people take him 100% seriously vs how many are just happy listening to an outsider that's taking shots at known corruption.