A l'il bit of media analysis

[sabotabby]

Sorry to go on about the Don Cherry thing when there are other, more important things to talk about, but this is a fascinating example of the way the media enables and promotes white supremacist ideology.

See, there was a protest against Cherry being fired. Two guys showed up. LOOOOOOL.


But.

If you watch the video itself, it's fascinating. It's seven and a half minutes long. There's a media scrum. For two guys standing in front of CBC! There are more people milling around than protesting.

Here is what happens in the video:

1) Two protesters show up. This is worthy of coverage by at least 7 different news outlets. I don't remember seeing CP24 coverage of, say, pro-Kurdish demos that get a lot more people out.

2) The protesters, to put it mildly, are not very coherent or prepared with their talking points.

3) To the point where the "journalist" from Rebel Media needs to basically put words in the guy's mouth.

4) CP24 devotes quite some time to allowing the Rebel Media guy to air his opinions under the guise of an interview.

 

This is why Ford and Trump. This is why the military was able to overthrow a democratically elected leader of a country and install far-right Christian fundamentalists and the soft liberal media has not dared call it a coup. This is how the People's Party of Canada, despite being a fringe group, got as much coverage as the mainstream parties. This is how the media makes far-right ideas look like their part of the mainstream discourse even where these ideas are not particularly popular or mainstream. So it's not actually that funny after all.

Comments

[dewline]

Amen. It's a very sick excuse for a joke, and I worry about how you and I will be incorporated into any possible punchline.

[sabotabby]

Yeeeep.

[springheel_jack]

It's like here. they didn't stop with firing the journalists. they hired (some) new ones, and they're heavily biased in favor of what they are pleased to think of as a "balanced centrist position" but which is actually very far right and heavily identified with ruling class interests.

[springheel_jack]

They're locked into these *narratives*, too. Narratives that drive right-wing grievance politics. The PC left has gone too far, and there will be a backlash. We have to cover the event and the backlash. We covered the firing, SO go cover the protest! The fact that *there is no protest* does not interfere with serving up that narrative. It's pure propaganda.

[sabotabby]

We have a lot of legacy journalists too. They’re just as bad or worse.

[dewline]

And what's Jordan Peterson doing having an office at Postmedia nowadays, by the by?

Thanks to Canadaland for warning me of this!

[sabotabby]

I didn't know that! Yikes. I thought he was in recovery. I'll have to start making fun of him again.

[notasupervillain]

In many ways, this is a story about the media, and there's nothing the media likes more than a story about itself.

[ironed_orchid]

This is very true.

[sabotabby]

A very good point.

[nyctanthes]

Ugh.......And my reaction is, sadly, to try not to engage with the news. Because it is so shallow and ridiculous. I pay for my newspaper subscriptions like a responsible person. And then I don't read them.

Ugh......

[sabotabby]

Sadly, I get a disproportionate amount of my news from social media. Like I do check CBC every day but I don't pay for subscriptions because I don't want to pay to be even angrier than I already am all the time.

[smhwpf]

Nigel Farage is one of the most regular guests on the BBC's flagship political panel discussion programme, Question Time. He has never been an MP. His party has never had more than 1 MPs, and that only by defection. He is an MEP (and his party has many MEPs), but other MEPs, in particular pro-EU MEPs, do not get invited on Question Time.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, only very rarely gets invited on QT.

[sabotabby]

It's such a coincidink. Weird!