Still misses
This RAND study on changes in media is refreshingly objective in some ways, but still misses the main point.

The team also found quantifiable changes in certain linguistic areas between the pre-2000 and post-2000 periods. For example, the three newspapers’ reporting before 2000 used language that was more heavily event- and context-based than it was in stories written after 2000; pre-2000 stories also contained more references to time, official titles, and positions and institutions and used more descriptive, elaborative language to provide story details. In contrast, the team found that post-2000 reporting engaged in more storytelling and emphasized interactions, personal perspective, and emotion.

Refreshingly objective: Treats Fox and CNN as equally bad. Normally an article on this subject treats CNN as the GOLD STANDARD OF ABSOLUTE TRUTH and treats Fox as Satan.

The 2000 dividing line is unsurprising. In 2000 cable networks figured out that soap operas sell more soap than news. So they turned the news into soap operas.

We found a starker contrast between broadcast news and prime-time cable presentation after 2000. Compared with news presentation on broadcast television, prime-time programming on cable outlets exhibited a dramatic and quantifiable shift toward subjective, abstract, directive, and argumentative language, with content based more on the expression of opinion than on the provision of facts.

All of this is obviously true. Nice to have it verified by a quantitative text analysis. But narrative language versus official titles is NOT the problem. Back in the '40s, radio news was strongly narrative. Bob Trout and Lowell Thomas were storytellers, not official statement quoters.

The important difference is in the content of the story, not the style. Trout was narrating things that actually happened. Modern narrators are narrating about narration, not narrating about events. They are telling us what Trump said about what Pelosi said, or more often telling us what Trump failed to say about what Pelosi said about what Pelosi thought Bernie should have said.

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The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Davis said in an interview that he is "no longer certain about claims he made to reporters on background and on the record in recent weeks about what Cohen knows about Trump's awareness of the Russian efforts."

99% of our "news" is ATROCIOUSLY BAD EPISTEMOLOGY. If we had actual philosophers, they would be unraveling this nonsense and pointing out its infinite bonkersness.

Since the philosophers aren't doing their JOB, let's try to do it for them. Systematize this mess.

[WaPo claims that [Davis claimed to [know that [Davis no longer knows about [his claim to [know what Cohen [knows about what Trump [knows about a [totally non-existent and thus unknowable fairy tale.]]]]]]]]]

That's EIGHT LAYERS of claims and knowledge and anti-claims and anti-knowledge, based on a delusion (RUSSIAN_MEDDLING) that anyone who ACTUALLY KNOWS THE SLIGHTEST MICROBIT OF REALITY knows to be a delusion.

There is NO ACTUAL EVENT in any of this mess.

NOTHING HAPPENED.

Which means there is NO NEWS and NO INFORMATION. All we have is a stupendous and stupefying pile of BAD PHILOSOPHY. It's a mishmash of midrash.

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The Rand report misses the role of the Shared Lie. Most of these "arguments" and "debates" are based on two "opposing" opinions about a FALSE FACT. We are never allowed to hear a statement of plain old reality.

Arguments about foreign policy start with the ABSOLUTE IMPERATIVE that we must destroy Venezuela or Russia or Persia or CURRENT_ENEMY. The discussion is an auction, not a debate. Each side bids up the necessary amount of violence and genocide. Nobody is allowed to ASK why we need to destroy Venezuela.

Arguments about domestic policy start with the FLAT ASSERTION that CO2 causes "climate change". The discussion is an auction. How much of civilization do we need to obliterate in order to reduce CO2 by the specified percentage? What is the appropriate percentage? Nobody is allowed to ASK whether the attribution of cause and effect is correct.

Labels: Carbon Cult, epistemology, malign misattribution, Shared Lie

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