The Media - Who's Being Brainwashed

 

Aside from ad hominem attacks and accusations of pedophilia, a common theme of (non) retorts from the far right individuals I've attempted to engage with is being a slave to CNN or MSNBC.  These two news channels are seen by the far right as brainwashing their audiences and acting as fluff pieces for the left.  In order to test this, I decided to screen grab the home pages of CNN and five right wing news outlets to see how they differed.  I've broken down stories into three categories:  fact based reporting, opinion, and fluff.  

Fact based is just that, but may include quotes from the sources of said story.  An example would be CNN's top story of Russia warning the US about shipping Patriot missiles to Ukraine.  

Opinion stories are interviews or more frequently Op Eds from supposed experts on a controversial subject.  Readers should take note of these pieces, because they're written from a single point of view and because they're someone's opinion, there's no representation of being factual.  In other words, these are the pieces that would be most likely to indoctrinate a reader to a particular viewpoint.  

Because this entry's intent is to uncover bias, I consider anything beyond this scope to be fluff.  Also, I don't give a shit whether William screamed at Harry or not, so it automatically hits the fluff category.  Because certain people won't read stories, this may not be the best representative sample of what people are consuming, but I don't watch much TV and prefer reading to watching videos; I can get through the stories much faster.  That being said, I didn't read most of the homepage articles because of time constraints.  Also, because of how each outlet's homepage is structured, spending time on actual numbers is a fool's errand.  I'm fairly certain you can identify trends without this data.

I'll start with the baseline and alleged brainwashing outlet, CNN.  Of the stories, I see a smattering of fact based and fluff, with two exceptions.  First is labelled "Opinion", with the other being "Ex-Trump White House lawyer makes prediction".  Lots of stories, but fairly straightforward, with most of the stories addressing what the average American is interested in, I guess.

Moving on to Fox News, you can understand why I'm not quantifying; the number of stories located on the homepage differs between each outlet.  The left column is nothing but opinion, with two fluffers.  The top story is fact based, but if you read the article, it's chock full of comments from the GOP deriding the bill, with one quote from a Dem.  The four in the center consist of two fact based, an opinion, and a fluff.  In summary, opinion pieces are the most common on this site.

Moving down the ladder in quality, but up it in bias, we hit Newsmax.  The main story is fact based and sourced from AP, with the Newsmax TV box populated by all opinion, save the Kirk Cameron hard right fluff piece, which is an opinion piece in disguise.  Another page even more dedicated to opinion.

Moving on to OAN, we see the top story as an opinion piece, along with the stories about Trump and Mayorkas.  The remainder could be considered as fact based, as they report what others have said and done, but when what those people have said are lies, I'd argue they don't fit in that category.  

There's no way anyone could categorize RSBN as anything but a Trump propaganda outlet.  There's nothing but Trump fluff pieces and opportunities to join in with other Trump supporters.  

Finally, I decided to include Red State, just for the hell of it.  As you can see, there's nothing there except for opinion pieces with an obvious hard right slant. 

Having gone through this exercise, I noticed a massive gap in what I was seeing; there was only one story each on Hunter Biden's laptop and the Twitter Files.  Also, no Bannon or other of the grifters.  I'd originally intended not to go down the rabbit hole to the basement of right wing media, but I wanted to see at what level the real conspiracy shit showed up. So, down the rabbit hole I went, using the sources noted by right wingers on the shooting message boards I spend time on.  

Let me tell you, there are a ton of them.  Just a cursory stroll through a few days of posts, I found links to the following:

Breitbart - This is semi mainstream, but delves into some conspiracy nonsense

Gateway Pundit - It's really hard to find the articles, but they're there and a hair below Breitbart

The Blaze - Lots of links to loons like Glenn Beck, who spew conspiracy lies

Citizen Free Press - One long page of links to other sources; some legit (MSN, ABC, AP) and others to some way out shit

The Federalist - Anti Biden, Pro Trump, light conspiracy stuff

American Wire News - More of the same

American Gulag - Fun stuff like J6 was a benign party

After identifying the ones above, I lost interest and my eyes began to glaze over.  How the hell can there be so many right wing media outlets?  Granted, they're all online only, but they do tend to run together.  What's notable is the lack of really hardcore conspiracies.  Sure, there were multiple stories about the laptop, and one about the federal government covering for Biden (but not alleging him being a criminal).  Of the eight reasons given, four were about the laptop and the rest were utter nonsense, meant to boost the total.  It should go without saying that there were a ton of non conspiracy lies, but again, nothing bonkers like I've seen on Twitter.  That begs the question of where are the right wing folks getting the information for the out there crap, like Biden being in China's pocket?  I have guesses, but I'm bored with this entry.  

Wrapping this up, it's become clear to me that the further one goes down the right wing media food chain, the further away from fact based information you become.  It's also crystal clear right wing media is far more interested in indoctrinating their users than the MSM.  In fact, some are outright propaganda.  This all leads to a question for the right, which is are liberals the ones being brainwashed?  

No, My Dog Doesn't Want to Play!

As one might imagine, there are a fair amount of dogs in the subdivision I live in.  In the middle of the subdivision, there's a park, which is roughly 75 meters square, and many of us use it as an area to walk our dogs.  Most of us understand the unwritten "rules of the road", when it comes to meeting other dogs, within the park, which typically involves whoever gets there first owns their track, whether that be clockwise or anticlockwise.  

We do this because some dogs don't like other dogs and direct contact could be unpleasant.  My dog doesn't like most of the dogs she sees, although there are some she mostly ignores.  But again, caution is better than a dog fight, unless your name is Maverick.  

Tonight, when we reached the park, there were two other people with their dogs.  One (Dog 1) was in the center, off lead, but well behaved.  The other (Dog 2) was on the same side as me, but headed away, so I went in the opposite direction to eliminate contact.  Much to my chagrin, this individual crossed the park and I found myself headed to a contretemps between Dog 1 and Dog 2.  It seems the well behaved off lead dog (Dog 1) wasn't perfect in the return command.  At this point, I reversed course and headed the other way, mildly annoyed at Dog 2's owner for dicking around.  

After my dog and I got around the corner of the park, I see Dog 2 and owner jogging across the park in my direction.  At that point, I passed through annoyance into pissed.  As Dog 2's owner got closer, he asked if mine wanted to play.  WTF???  My response was quite pleasant for me.  "No she doesn't want to play, which is why I kept changing direction to get away from you!"  I'll take the pat on the back for not using the words "dumb fuck".