Welcome to Saturday Hashtag, a weekly place for broader context.
|
Listen To This Story
 |
Over the last decade, the precipitous collapse of accountability — especially in media — strengthened by the rise of digital capitalism, has not only compromised public trust and helped create the largest concentration of wealth in human history, it has also undermined American democracy and contributed to destabilizing the world.
This was all greatly accelerated in 2017 by Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, who personified the crucial GOP Karl Rove transformation when she willfully validated supplanting actual facts with manufactured lies she called alternative facts on a live network TV broadcast.
The GOP Karl Rove transformation:
“A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite for democracy,” Thomas Jefferson (GOP president) to Richard Price (economist) — Letter, 1789.
“Create your own reality,” Karl Rove (Bush White House administration/GOP strategist) to Ron Suskind (journalist) — The New York Times, 2004.
***
Media outlets and digital networks have been operating for years free from any liability for the deceptive and sometimes deadly product (misinformation/disinformation) they manufacture and disseminate.
These digital media platforms (some operated in America by non/fake US citizens or multinational companies) are openly commodifying inaccurate information, coded propaganda, and outright disinformation, using a freedom of speech guise to hide their perfidy and evade consequences.
The mechanisms of this unregulated digital capitalism have eviscerated robust objective journalism. So now extreme partisan interests can freely fabricate false narratives that obfuscate facts and distort reality.
Even the autonomous digital operations of search engines and AI are not free from influence. They are (like the public) affected and manipulated by the consensus fallacy of Algorithm-Ification, the process of codifying, quantizing, and qualifying data, including social behavior.
Cunning right-wing media figures/platforms like Jeffrey Scott Shapiro and The Wall Street Journal create and publish deceptive and inaccurate “opinion” content that gets artificially amplified.
The disproportional representation of unreasonably biased (digitated) content (e.g. partisan distorted “editorials” and directed disinformation) perverts how facts are represented in search engine and AI outputs. This subsequently warps how these facts are then perceived in social media platforms.
This is why these digital entities are inaccurately depicting January 6 as a “riot” rather than what it was (according to the definition of all the factual events of that day): a planned armed deadly insurrection.
This situation has destroyed media transparency, eroded institutional trust, and poisoned civic engagement, leading to a polarized public, a divided nation and a dysfunctional government.
Now legislators and the public are struggling to make fact-based, common sense decisions about everything from energy policy, health regulation, and climate change to the trumped-up election fraud, the Jewish space laser weather modification program, and the sphericalness of Earth.
How Capitalism Became a Threat to Democracy
From Project Syndicate: “Since the 1980s, American capitalism has been transformed into a winner-takes-all economy in which one or a few technologically dominant firms monopolize each sector at the expense of consumers, workers, and overall growth. And with permanent market power comes the kind of political power that is antithetical to democracy.”
Will 2024 Be the Year Fake News Destroys Democracy?
The author writes, “With almost a billion people heading to the polls, countries urgently need to band together to combat a flood of disinformation and digital manipulation.”
The Big Election Year: How To Protect Democracy in the Era of AI
From the World Economic Forum: “The Global Risks Report 2024 named misinformation and disinformation a top risk, which could destabilize society as the legitimacy of election results may be questioned. The convergence of the ‘post-truth era,’ election processes and the surge in generative AI over the last year means that tech companies, governments and media must consider how they can help protect democracies.”
How the Media Can Escape Its Doom Loop of Distrust
From Bloomberg: “Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller argues that news needs more transparency and accountability to regain public trust. Greater media literacy is also essential.”
2024 World Press Freedom Index — Journalism Under Political Pressure
From Reporters Without Borders: “Press freedom around the world is being threatened by the very people who should be its guarantors — political authorities. This is clear from the latest annual World Press Freedom Index produced by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). This finding is based on the fact that, of the five indicators used to compile the ranking, it is the political indicator that has fallen most, registering a global average fall of 7.6 points.”
Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
From Reuters: “This year’s Reuters Institute Digital News Report documents the scale and scope of ongoing ‘platform resets’ where — even before new advances in generative artificial intelligence further change the information ecosystem — the environment for publishers and others who want to connect with the public is undergoing substantial change. Legacy social media such as Facebook and X are actively reducing the prominence and role of news on their platforms, and moving further away from a reliance on links driving referrals to publishers, even as increasingly popular platforms of different kinds are growing more important, also for how many people access, find, share, and experience news.”
The American Dream Is Collapsing, and It’s Knocking Billionaires off Their Pedestals
The author writes, “As privileged households’ finances balloon, so does criticism of those who hoard wealth. Of course, the nation’s founding myth focuses on said rich figures who climb their way to the top through hard work. But as belief in said American Dream wanes, many Americans are grasping onto a new goal: taking billionaires to task.”
