More than anything else, I declare year 2024 as the death of mainstream media. Never before was their bias, their criminality and total hostility to truth more openly obvious, more flagrantly flaunted by them. Scandal after scandal marred the last few remnant crumbs of credibility that remained, from covering up Biden’s clear dementia, presidential incompetence, and outright familial criminality, to covering for Israel’s genocide all year long, with ‘creative’ formatting and syntax tricks, as well as lack of any impartiality or ability to question the State Narrative. They have exposed themselves as nothing more than an antiquated soapbox of disinformation and narrative control. This year was truly the long-overdue—and much-earned—death of mainstream media as an institution.
Virtually everything of note, any newsworthy revelation or exposé, was broken on either Twitter, Substack, or associated ‘citizen journalist’ haven. People are tuning out more and more from corporate legacy programming in general, whether it’s MSM or Hollywood or even major sports—with recent headlines reporting NBA viewership down by 50%, for instance.
Which seems to return us to the very beginnings of these pages, Media Lens, and the two Davids' far sighted writings.
it was always a corpse but I agree that there has been a further transformation
I also think the David's reliance on the propaganda model is insufficient.
It's increasingly obvious that conspiracy determines the published news in addition to the five filters.
The single ex CIA operative censoring all bbc articles the most open example along with D notices but I think all media output is now controlled by the security services.
I wouldn't want to rely too heavily on a friend of Epstein for my media model..or my analysis of jfk assassination, 9-11 or the federal reserve bank for that matter.
I agree: Chomsky's famous riposte to Andrew Marr is no longer an adequate explanation for MSM
I tend to think there's always been conspiracy in crafting media narratives but that it was once covert and is now overt. There are still plenty of Andrew Marrs around - people in senior positions in TV and other media because they profess to believe - and probably DO sincerely believe - the official orthodoxes of the day. But there's so much else going on - the revisionism surrounding the events of WW2, for example. Within a dozen years, the Nazis will be the good guys with the Soviet Union responsible for starting the war and all the atrocities that followed. The rehabilitation of Nazism and the general re-writing of history. The spinning of entirely false narratives; up is down, left is right, in is out etc, etc. None of this happens accidentally.
Re: I agree: Chomsky's famous riposte to Andrew Marr is no longer an adequate explanation for MSM
I have said for years on here that I never bought the Marr line...I could not but come to the long held conclusion that many of these msm hacks, top ones too, are willful liars. I lost count of the times I have saw the Warks, the Snows, the Paxmans, and so many others, on the likes of "Have I Got News For You", laughing and being all so clever at denouncing some political act or pronounciation/policy just to show how they are not taken in by all the shit, only for a week or two later to have the same "down with the kids" pretend objects of their ire on their shows, treating them with the utmost of respect and handling them with kid gloves. Hypocritical, lying hack barstewards.
on January 2, 2025, 9:20 pm