It's because of JRE that I discovered this whole new world of podcasting.
It was an NPR pledge drive that really drove me to podcasts
It was also the NYT's Walter Duranty [1] that covered up Stalin's mass murder of millions in the Ukrainian Holodomor [2], and also, Stalin's purges and show trials. He didn't just cover up the Holodomor, or the Russian starvation, he actually fake fact-checked it in true Facebook fashion, writing the following "Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The food shortage, however, which has affected the whole population in the last year and particularly in the grain-producing provinces – the Ukraine, North Caucasus [i.e. Kuban Region], and the Lower Volga – has, however, caused heavy loss of life", and in doing so, refuted the reporting of Gareth Jones.
And Walter got a Pulitzer for his misinformation.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Stalins-Apologist-Walter-Duranty-Time...
For example I’m always annoyed when I see the treatment of Julian Assange and how the corporate press ignores or denigrates him.
If I’m having a 3 hour chat with Jim Gaffigan in public or private I’m not going to bring it up even once.
If I would chat with Bill Maher or Edward Snowden for 3 hours I’d assume it’d come up.
Joe just injects it into all of his discussions. I can understand why he would be bothered by the attacks on his character but it seems to me like it has become detrimental to his state of mind day to day.
Maybe he needs to smoke some weed or DMT by himself and do some introspection ;)
Well, the internet connected into a billion+ audience in last 20 years. We didn't have the ability to give a megaphone to every crackpot ~20 years ago. You'd have to physically rally people behind you, literally on the road to get your movement going. Now, Big Tech will gladly serve you that priviledge for a pretty penny off of clicks. And so will the media.
The natural physical filter is no more. It used to sort of self-censor people because they couldn't get a following. Now mainstream media is on the Internet and so are the gullible citizens. Blame the following: Big Tech, Internet Media houses (NYT is constantly full of rage, Fox too), Social Media giants (Twitter, FB, Tiktok, Reddit).
Next wave of understanding will come from in-person social life. It will be the anti-thesis of Metaverse.
The media landscape has become so strange in the past decade.
The more I think about it, advertising and more abstractly, corporatism, are really to blame.
How many of the “video games are violent and bad” or “Marilyn Manson is the devil” people were there really in 90’s early 2000’s? Starbucks hates Christmas people in the late 2000’s/early 2010’s?
Were they just amplified by the media? Is social media and the internet really to blame or did they just exploit a greedy industry already broken by years of mergers and acquisitions by conglomerates who already weren’t keen on spending on journalism?
Unfortunately I think attacks on his having been prescribed ivermectin and his guests like the highly published cardiologist and the guy that contracts with the defense department and has patents related to MRNA really got on his nerves and recently he’s been leaning too hard into the “mainstream media lies” discussions, it’s nearly bordering on an obsession. I was surprised he was even discussing it with Jim Gaffigan.
We’re at a very bad place in American discourse. In a recent episode (past 2 weeks) Bill Maher quoted some survey that nearly a majority of Americans believe that we’re headed towards a civil war.
Attacking, degrading, deplatforming and silencing our fellow citizens is only going to push us further towards the brink.