It’s amusing that there is a meme around that says that Musk offered to buy, then delete, Facebook.

Almost seems prescient. 😛

I’m bingewatching The Flash atm.

One of the central themes of the series is that Iris Allen, the titular character’s wife, is a “journalist” (that character actually has been since the early days of the “modern” Flash^)

In the series, however, she runs a local online outlet, the “Citizen”.

This season there was an interaction between another regular character, whom she promoted to “managing editor” over a number of far more experienced employees, on the idea that she understood better what the readers wanted, since she’d been there for a couple years, while the more experienced employees were new.

So good, so far, but then she basically argues that it’s “the Citizen’s voice” and thus it should reflect the opinions of the readers as well as “the facts”.

One of the displeased experienced writers asked if they were to stop interviewing important people.

Another one (falsely**) argues about only reporting the facts, and leave the editorializing/opinion stuff on the editorial section.

They both get stomped on, the former by “add interviews of people on the street”, and the other just flat out told to suck eggs.

This, of course, is the depiction of how The News is supposed to be packaged and presented to the reader, today — not the facts, but the positions of some random street bozo on things. This, of course, has no interest in teaching them to be informed, but to have their opinions repeated back to them.

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** Falsely, as the character isn’t that old, she is maybe 35ish.

Back in the Mid-NINETIES the Journo Union removed the ethical requirement that they are to be “fair and balanced” and to not take positions, just report on the facts. Few are aware of this, but they’ve been promoting opinions as facts since at least that time, and have dropped all pretense of anything else.

^ One of the very very legit complaints about this version of the show is that it’s an entire “ensemble” show — the character has nothing whatsoever to do with the character, historically, in the comics, but is surrounded by different support characters, making it easy to for the writers to create melodramatic moments, just by feeding a given character lines.

I mention this because Flash is probably the most egregious of all of them. He was always exceptionally private about his Secret Identity — probably more than any other character in all of comics history.

The character was, in the 60s comics, actually married for **TWO YEARS** before he revealed who he was to his wife (yeah, kids believe that, no adult would). Kind of makes for an interestingly bad talent as a journalist, when you think about it as an adult.

But with the TV show, it’s particularly egregious as, as a result, there are probably not less than two dozen people who know his true identity…

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2022/04/20/former-intel-officials-want-efforts-to-break-up-big-tech-stopped-data-control-and-retention-of-social-media-partnership-is-a-national-security-imperative/

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/george_soros_and_german_media.html

https://mobile.twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1516521130743541761?s=20&t=V6Me5cesyhoewXp_MfuUKw

In the New York Times’ worldview, they start with the right to dox me, and I had to earn the right to remain anonymous by proving I’m the perfect sympathetic victim who satisfies all their criteria of victimhood. But in my worldview, I start with the right to anonymity, and they need to make an affirmative case for doxxing me. I admit I am not the perfect victim. The death threats against me are all by losers who probably don’t know which side of a gun you shoot someone with. If anything happened at work, it would probably inconvenience me and my patients, but probably wouldn’t literally kill either of us. Still! Don’t kick me in the f–king balls!

It’s bad enough to get kicked in the balls because Power hates you. But it’s infuriating to have it happen because Power can’t bring itself to care.

https://twitter.com/ShimshockAndAwe/status/1516859398282526720?cxt=HHwWgIC-jcHl-4wqAAAA

So I guess there will be no mining of past vile hypocrisies any time soon.

Let me restate that. In the nation of Germany it is illegal for parents to educate their children. Even if the parents are degreed school teachers.

How are the “intellectuals” to serve the state and earn their sinecures, if the masses start to stop and think?

For this essential acceptance, the majority must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise and, at least, inevitable, and certainly better than other conceivable alternatives. Promoting this ideology among the people is the vital social task of the “intellectuals.” For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the “opinion-molders” in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear.

It is evident that the State needs the intellectuals; it is not so evident why intellectuals need the State. Put simply, we may state that the intellectual’s livelihood in the free market is never too secure; for the intellectual must depend on the values and choices of the masses of his fellow men, and it is precisely characteristic of the masses that they are generally uninterested in intellectual matters. The State, on the other hand, is willing to offer the intellectuals a secure and permanent berth in the State apparatus; and thus a secure income and the panoply of prestige. For the intellectuals will be handsomely rewarded for the important function they perform for the State rulers, of which group they now become a part.

–Murray Rothbard, ‘The Anatomy of the State’