A computer science axiom
Democrats sometimes shake their heads in wonderment: How can Trump supporters possibly believe so many false things?
Answer: They are fed garbage.
Here is a current example.
Beginning Sunday afternoon, amid news of the manhunt for Vance Boelter, the chief suspect in the Minnesota shooting of Democratic legislators, I looked at how Trump-friendly media were handling its description of Boelter.
U.S. Senator Mike Lee (R. Utah) went public quickly with a tweet positing an explanation/motive:
“This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,”
He followed up suggesting that Democratic Governor Tim Walz was at fault, with a pun and movie allusion: "Nightmare on Waltz [sic] Street."
The shooter is a Marxist? Really?
Lee's Senate colleagues complained, and social media erupted. calling Lee's comments false and a poor subject for humor. Senator Lee was wrong, but he was the vanguard of the MAGA media environment's frame of the shootings, even though he took some heat for it.
Fox News and One America News Network took the same approach as Senator Lee. On air and in their digital platforms they said the shooter was a Trump opponent. After all, his car had contained fliers on the "No Kings" protests along with the names and home addresses of multiple additional Democrats. Fox and OANN noted that Walz had renewed the appointment of Boelter to a large citizen Workplace Advisory Board. So Democrats must be out shooting Democrats.
The device each network used for blaming Democrats was the reaction of a former Minnesota Vikings football player, Jack Brewer who they made the local man-on-the-ground expert on Minnesota politics. He was central to their frame.
Here is Fox:
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Here is OANN:
They asserted Brewer was enforcing orthodox politics on fellow Democrats.
Fox quotes Brewer:
On this Father’s Day, I wish Minnesota would focus on restoring fatherhood — protecting women, protecting families. Tim Walz is the example of a weak, emasculated leader. That is not what God made fathers to be.
It’s pathetic. It’s terrible. The root cause of all of this is evil. When you’re willing to attack, ridicule, riot and protest anyone who believes something different — even in your own party — you’ve gone too far. The Democrats have gone so far left that if you’re not a raging liberal, you’re under attack. They are forcing everyone in the party to conform.
So in a news environment in which a man with an ample social media presence as an evangelical Christian and anti-abortion activist kills Democrats, the story in conservative media is that a too-liberal Democrat is killing Democrats because Governor Walz isn't masculine enough.
The Wall Street Journal, the Murdoch media outlet for people who read and invest, published a thought piece this morning. It is a "both sides do it" article that equated Trump praising January 6 rioters who tried to stop an election by attacking the U.S. Capitol, and their subsequent pardon by Trump, with young hooligans burning cars in Los Angeles, which Democratic leaders condemn and prosecute.
He’s a buddy of Gov. Tim Walz who might have been motivated by some state-legislative chicanery over illegal immigration. No, he's a Trump-supporting Democrat-loathing, pro-life extremist. It seems likely as we learn more that the latter is a closer fit, but does it matter? The other side will surely get the villain it longs for next time.
Darned right the latter is a closer fit. One is true and the other false. They aren't equivalent.
Does it matter? Yes, it does matter. One informs an electorate. The other misinforms it.
Garbage in, garbage out.
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7 comments:
We need to go back to licensing that requires a balanced presentation. Fox should lose its license if it is so one sided. It’s public airwaves so some regulation should take place. Fair and balanced should be the goal.
MSNBC should not lose its license despite being utterly one-sided, because its side is what's good and true and judicious and accurate.
If you see the entire MAGAverse as an elaborate multilayered con to fleece the flock, which it certainly is, then right wing media, including commentary from sitting Republican lawmakers, is just one aspect of the grift.
By the way, Lee's tweets were meant to impress one person, make no mistake.
The Presidency is being monetized "like you've never seen", and they all seem ok with it as long as they are deporting farm laborers, cooks, housekeepers and college students and promoting absurdities like DOGE and MAHA. On one level you have the foreign real estate deals and on another meme coins, sneakers, and now, (drum roll!) gold cell phones for the rubes, whose childlike gullibility would elicit sympathy if it wasn't so despicably racist and bigoted.
This seems to me to be the main objective, with Authoritarianism merely a side hustle.
Heads up to readers: Low Dudgeon often employs subtle irony and is doing so here. Quick readers scanning comments, especially hers, misses this point.
But let me say that MSNBC and Fox are not equivalent any more than is the Trump-endorsed violence on Jan 6 by people he sanctioned by pardoning (and giving $15 million of taxpayer money to Ashli Babbit who was shot and killed when part of a mob pushing through a door and window to attack members of Congress who were sheltering past that barrier) and the actions of freelance hooligans burning cars against the objection of LA and California law enforcement and the condemnation of Democratic officials. MSNBC is leftist but it does not daily present alternative facts that are contradicted by reality. There is indeed such a thing as reality and truth that can be checked. Audited. Reviewed. Tested.
There is a bigger problem here than just what Fox News does. AI is now capable of creating videos that are indistinguishable from reality, of anyone you choose saying anything you want them to, or doing anything you want them to.
We are in what has been called an “epistemic crisis,“ meaning that we have little to no way of distinguishing truth from the blizzard of falsehoods and half-truths coming our way.
We don’t know whether we will be able to fix this problem going forward, but we had better try.
The Anti-Defamation League tracks murders committed by domestic extremists. Over the last decade, 76% were committed by right-wing extremists. The comments by Republicans and their noise machine were not only heartless but lies. Boelter is a conservative religious zealot.
We can distinguish fact from fiction by getting information from reliable sources. If Trump calls it "fake news" or "the enemy of the people," it's probably reliable.
Oh, Jeez. Come on.If you can't tell right wing spew from left wing spew. ..There are clues of syntax and the attitude of the narrative that to me at least, are a dead giveaway. If not that, the character of the reporter also tells a lot. You fix this problem by simply having a clue how people act and talk. No mystery at all.
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