Ramblings on Media and the Gell-Mann amnesia effect

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

I see a lot of leftists blindly support immigrants and immigration, with the assertion that racism is a “false division” stoked by billionaires to keep the working class divided. What they fail to acknowledge is that there is a real and fundamental division between the native population of a country and third world immigrants, who will naturally act as scab labour, due to their lower expectations (a shit job getting exploited at McGregor Steel is still heaven compared to Haiti). Billionaires encourage mass migration with the one hand, and stoke race-based discord with the other. That’s my theory on the current discourse surrounding mass migration.

It’s also occurred to me that we can make a similar claim about journalism. I think an appropriate with to describe the kind of people who use this site is just unorthodox. Many unorthodox people espouse very little respect for journalists and journalism. There was a phenomenon called the “Gell Mann Amnesia Effect” which posited that we have short memories when it comes to distrusting the media; we still trust it even when we’ve found it to be dishonest in domains in which we know better. There’s obviously a limit to it and many of us have blown past that. However, this puts us, as a citizenry, in a very weak position. If we don’t trust journalism, what can we trust? Down here in Victoria, there’s a man named Dezi Freeman who is on the lam, having killed two police whilst they were attempting to confiscate his guns due to his being charged with child abuse. I’m skeptical of unsubstantiated allegations from the Victorian police, because they have a history of corruption and frivolous allegations of child abuse against opponents of the state (the man was a well known SovCit). The media provides no details on the substance of the original allegations. As a citizen, I forced to withhold judgement on the matter, or have contingent opinions. If the original allegations sound bogus, I’d probably be more sympathetic towards him, but if they sound legit, I would be more sympathetic towards the police. More and more, with matters like this we are at the mercy of what the Corporate or Government media liaisons bestow upon us. In general, the media has really clammed up on reporting facts of the matter. The end result is that as a citizenry it becomes difficult to hold a strong opinion on a matter of public interest, because it’s impossible to be sufficiently informed.

So it would be better if we could trust most journalism, but at the same time most journalism isn’t worthy of our trust. The complete erosion of trust is merited but it doesn’t actually serve us to be in this position. It’s kind of like the baby’s been thrown out with the bath water, because without strong journalism the erosion of our freedoms will just be that much easier.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

For sure.
There are loads of institutions where the answer to them being actively dedicated to manipulating regular people is "Then don't listen to ____" but every single process you can't trust to function or institution you can't trust to have the best interests of people in mind is another chip at the workings that keep society functioning.

It's like with libertarian types who believe if we just let natural selection take over that everything would work out, except the only reason that society has ever gotten as far as it has is because people have been able to live and work within a system where a level of trust and identity existed. Aristotle said that democracy couldn't really work in the long term without that sense of trust and identity within a population, and I think I agree.

That's why it feels so profane every time a journalist, or academic, or media figure comes out trying to whisper bullshit in people's ears. These entities constantly working their roots into the periphery and looking for any possible angle to fuck with people and insert their own (or their handler's) preferred narrative is an attack that individually you can just ignore, but over time it slowly corrodes the foundation of everything.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

As a citizen, I forced to withhold judgement on the matter, or have contingent opinions.

every single process you can't trust to function or institution you can't trust to have the best interests of people in mind is another chip at the workings that keep society functioning.

Why are you two treating "the citizenry" or "society" as if it were a concrete agent that can hold opinions or have foundations that can erode? That's not the case, and only individuals act. "Citizenry" is a label the government uses to pass off government's own interests as yours, and "society" has no one single foundation that can corrode. What exists are property relations between people, and those relations don't rest on some collective trust, but exclusion and consent (who owns what, and whether others respect it)

So it would be better if we could trust most journalism, but at the same time most journalism isn’t worthy of our trust.

Trust in journalism was never possible. It was never a safeguard to begin with.
Like academia and the priesthoods before it, journalism survives by supplying the state with ideological cover. The state cannot rule by force alone, it depends on intellectuals and media to make its predation look like protection.
If you want "trustworthy journalism", that's like saying you want an honest counterfeiter.

Aristotle said that democracy couldn't really work in the long term without that sense of trust and identity within a population, and I think I agree.

That assumes that democracy is supposed to "work". But democracy is nothing but a form of communism, it's a mechanism to redistribute control of property by force. The real issue is not whether people under it trust each other, but whether conflict over scarce goods can be avoided at all. And the answer to that isn't ballots and institutional trust, but self-ownership and voluntary exchange.
If you're worried about manipulation, rehabilitating journalism or democracy isn't the solution. You must recognize that both journalism and democracy are instruments of the same machinery, namely "public service" which is just organized coercion. Once you take off your propaganda-tinted glasses, you stop seeing a baby being thrown out with the bathwater and start seeing parasites losing their credibility.

 

[Rekieta’s Broken Penis]

I didn’t say that all “citizens” are a monolith but “the citizenry” is a useful concept to employ when considering society and especially the relationship the government and people who are not the government (or the “people under it” as you have said). To be clear, in the context of my post I essentially meant people who have no particular access to information and who are the recipients of this manufactured consent. Their varied opinions, goals and ambitions are irrelevant in this context.

I guess we disagree on the libertarian stuff. As you yourself noted, property relationships and ownership only exist insofar as a society recognises them to exist. The regulation, or governing, of those relationships is the fundamental purpose of a government. I find it a bit bizarre to malign government as coercive when all property relationships are underwritten by coercion. How could governments escape that fundamental principle of human interactions?

Yes, most major media outlets survive by providing the state with ideological cover. I guess my point was that I think journalism itself can be more than that and you shouldn’t just write it all off as a concept. What’s the difference between disconnecting and believing the ideological cover? It’s a victory for them either way.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

“the citizenry” is a useful concept to employ when considering society and especially the relationship the government and people who are not the government

That "citizenry" exists only as a state's category. The real relation is always individual people, either victims of aggression or left alone. Packaging them into a single bloc is how the state disguises predation as "serving the citizenry"

property relationships and ownership only exist insofar as a society recognises them to exist. [...] all property relationships are underwritten by coercion.

It's the other way around. You can't even describe coercion without presupposing property. To call something "stolen" already assumes someone owned it, and ownership is established by first embordering a rivalrous good. That act excludes others without creating conflict. Every later claim must override it with force. Government doesn't underwrite the process of conflict-free property acquisition, the state appears only later to violate property, to siphon off production through legalized coercion.

journalism itself can be more than that and you shouldn’t just write it all off as a concept.

Journalism has never been neutral. The role of journalism has always been to make coercion look legitimate, to make predation look like protection. "Trustworthy journalism" is like honest counterfeiting, the function itself rules out truth. Its survival requires aligning with power, and that's not an accident or a bug that can be fixed, it's the core essence of the institution of journalism as such.
Once you see that, you hopefully stop asking how to rehabilitate parasites and start asking how to live without parasites at all.

 

[Vect]

So it would be better if we could trust most journalism, but at the same time most journalism isn’t worthy of our trust. The complete erosion of trust is merited but it doesn’t actually serve us to be in this position. It’s kind of like the baby’s been thrown out with the bath water, because without strong journalism the erosion of our freedoms will just be that much easier.

Right, but journalism isn't the same everywhere. Local journalism is freer of agenda because by necessity they're in tune with the community and are a part of them. In Australia, national journalism is generally split between sensationism and ideology. I've noticed a near tabloid like The Herald Sun vs. a more 'respectable' paper like The Age would provide two viewpoints with differing information, often in the form of who was asked information and the degree of open speculation invited. People tend to overlook that two seemingly contradictory narratives can be true at the same time.

The best thing to do in my opinion is cross reference multiple views with the assumption that ALL of them are true as presented and work across them in your mind, which I do believe is actually more useful that reporting that tries to be as dispassionate and unbiased as possible. The irony of the lack of trust in biased journalism is that journalism that tries to be unbiased serves no better, because they are disposed to create false equivalencies and leave out what might be interpreted as biased information. The people should take information as it comes and rationalize it based on logic, social mores and personal values, and in that way, we have a spectrum of consensus. Bias must always be expected and cross referenced, but it's not something the average person has the luxury to do, which is how most readers of news choose certain sources and stick them.

Journalism has never been neutral. The role of journalism has always been to make coercion look legitimate, to make predation look like protection. "Trustworthy journalism" is like honest counterfeiting, the function itself rules out truth. Its survival requires aligning with power, and that's not an accident or a bug that can be fixed, it's the core essence of the institution of journalism as such.

Yes, journalism cannot be truly neutral, but describing journalism as an inherently totalitarian form of control is a presentist fallacy based upon the idea that journalism is institutional, but it isn't. The so called 'Fourth Estate' applies equivalently to the public and the press as one, with an interest in holding power accountable. The lie propagated by news and media organizations with political influence and access is that they are the Fourth Estate, by implication and in practice a class separate from the public by their declaration and self-belief of credibility - which for practical, economic purposed is largely (now grudgingly) accepted by most people. The very acceptance that all journalism is a form of coercion is itself a by-product of the idea that 'news' is inherently corporate, is especially when the only news you hear is the stuff that hasn't been stifled. In fact, as you yourself have demonstrated in your posts, that journalism seems to enforce coercion is evidence that the practice of journalism itself is being coerced.

Kiwi Farms, 4chan, Reddit, blog sites, YouTubers, SubStack writers, historians, analysts, financial speculators, even cranks who write about conspiracy theories all do journalism. Gather information on a topic and present it to an audience. The variety of intent and integrity is vast, but the result is always presentation of information, which itself is always in flux. Reporting, no matter the motive, is an act of the present and the person.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

describing journalism as an inherently totalitarian form of control is a presentist fallacy based upon the idea that journalism is institutional, but it isn't. The so called 'Fourth Estate' applies equivalently to the public and the press as one

The "Fourth Estate" itself is a myth. The term was coined to grant a pretense of legitimacy to the professional press as a partner in governance. If everyone posting here or on substack is equally "the Fourth Estate", then the phrase has no meaning. And if it only applies to outlets with credentials, then it's precisely a self-proclaimed class separate from the public.
Either way, it doesn't describe reality, it's a tool of prestige.

journalism seems to enforce coercion is evidence that the practice of journalism itself is being coerced.

Why are you erasing agency?
Nobody forces journalists to embed with state departments, accept "official sources" as gospel, or whitewash leaks to shape public opinion. They do it because that's the price of access. The institution selects for complicitness. Calling that "coerced" just lets them off the hook for their disgraceful behavior.

Kiwi Farms, 4chan, Reddit, blog sites, YouTubers, SubStack writers, historians, analysts, financial speculators, even cranks who write about conspiracy theories all do journalism.

No. They do speech. Speech is universal. Journalism is the subset that survives only by aligning with power and selling itself as authoritative. Conflating speech and journalism just smuggles prestige from the latter onto the former.
The point isn't that nobody ever reports information. The point is that the institution of journalism exists to frame information in a way that makes coercion look like order. And that this is not a glitch of the 20th century press, but it's the only reason that "journalists" persist as a category.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Billionaires encourage mass migration with the one hand, and stoke race-based discord with the other. That’s my theory on the current discourse surrounding mass migration.

I post about it frequently but that is historically what happens. The Progressive Era business community would both import scab workers from the Deep South/Italy to a town and also start up the KKK hate mob at the same time. Leaked Amazon documents confirmed that they prefer diverse workplaces because they derail unionization.

The mistake is in not seeing where the Left is partially correct. As long as the scab is in your industry you have to cooperate with him or you have no effective union. But his mere presence in the industry makes everything worse, even within the union.

At a society-wide and political scale, the rich can be the mutual and ultimate enemy of all nations poor and the foreigner be a nuisance best kept out of your country at the same time. You tolerate him as an ally of necessity, the alliance usually helps to assimilate/reconcile the groups, and you pull the ladder up behind you. Given humanity is a bunch of crab bucket faggots, this is easier than it sounds; you get the modern irony of people like Italians being some of the most nativist Americans in the Northeast despite their own ancestors having been criminals and degenerates.