Malpractice

A Sick Joke

Ha, ha! I saw the ad for the Los Angeles County gun buyback. What a sick joke! Taxpayer funds are going to be spent to gather what? Old, non-functioning junk?

$200 for a long gun? That’s about 1/10 what they’re worth. So, taxpayers are going to be told some ridiculous story about the hundreds of guns that were collected, but most of them probably don’t work.

Ralph J. Ortolano San Pedro

Sixth Street Sign is About as Visionary as SP Can Get

James, I just read your article on the “sign” proposal and was reminded just how bad San Pedro is and how they (almost everyone there) always seem to do the political or “normal” thing rather than anything really new, boldly different or special for 6th Street. Arts district my ass. Only when you rid that special area of typical ideas, cars and plain old blacktop, will it become all that it could be. Walkable up to Pacific — anytime.

If you want, please be my guest and thrust forward an idea I also put forward back in 2007. See if you get any response. I dare you.

Richard Pawlowski Oregon

corporation, Rupert Murdoch — knew these reports were false, but aired them because they were more concerned with confirming their audience’s belief that Donald Trump won the election.

The evidence presented in the court documents speaks to the journalistic malpractice that plagues the cable news industry. Journalistic malpractice refers to professional journalists who privilege ideological bias and profits over truth in their reporting. Fox News Channel is patient zero for the plague of journalistic malpractice. It was created in 1996 by Rupert Murdoch and the late Roger Ailes, a media consultant for several Republican presidents, as a political project to sell conservative culture and policy to the American public with pro-conservative propaganda disguised as journalism.

Liberals were right to assert that such chicanery was propaganda, not journalism. But before liberal readers scold Fox News viewers, they should remind themselves that the plague of journalistic malpractice has also infected the liberal leaning cable networks such as CNN and MSNBC. Researchers and scholars have noted that the advent of cable and then the internet saw news media outlets shift from attaining the largest audience possible to focusing on a more specific or narrow demographic of the audience. While Fox News Channel sought to cater to Republican Party voting viewers, CNN and MSNBC did the same for Democratic Party voters.

This gave the Democratic Party influence over programming that was tantamount to what the Republican Party long enjoyed at Fox.

The partisan falsehoods in cable news includes the production of powerful, long-running false stories designed to convince their audiences that the other party is wrong and crazy. For years now, conservatives and Fox News Channel perpetuated the baseless Q’Anon conspiracy, which alleges that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles — mainly in the Democratic Party — runs global affairs but Trump will break up the conspiracy. The absurdity of this conspiracy is tantamount to liberal leaning news media’s reporting on Russiagate, which sought to discredit Republicans. Since 2016, Russiagate — the story that Russia meddled in and influenced the outcome of the U.S. election in 2016, had direct connections to Donald Trump and his associates, and worked to help defeat Hillary Clinton for the presidency — was perpetuated by a series of false stories from Democratic Partyfriendly media.

Conservatives rightly see this reporting and believe liberals are insane. Both factions need to look in a mirror. While audiences can clearly see the insanity in other networks’ viewers, they rarely seem to see it in themselves.

Without a robust media system that privileges truth over preaching to the choir, the public will have endless debates devoid of facts on key issues such as critical race theory, vaccine efficacy, the origins of the COVID-19 virus, climate change, transgender issues, Ukraine, mysterious balloons, and more.

While the courts are unlikely to deliver solace from political party propaganda disguised as journalism, they have provided some wisdom. Both Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson, of MSNBC and Fox News Channel respectively, have been brought to court for spreading false information and were exonerated because the judges concluded that no reasonable person would believe either of them were telling the truth. That is good advice, and viewers would be wise to remember it every time they consider watching cable news.

Nolan Higdon is an author and university lecturer at Merrill College and the education department at University of California, Santa Cruz. Higdon’s areas of concentration include podcasting, digital culture, news media history, and critical media literacy. Higdon is a regular contributor to Savage Minds and a Project Censored national judge.