And it's definitely not for being critical of Israel's government's policies. You can believe that the Jewish people deserve to have a peaceful place to live, and also believe that what they are doing to Palestine is wrong.
"Centrist" in a grassroots political perspective means one sees merit in the values generally (purportedly) held by both tribes. "Centrist" for an oligarch just means they place bets on both horses.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests.
This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.
In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."
A weird cult existing doesn’t change tbat “Zionism” remain overwhelmingly popular among Jews. Granted since the term has been demonized and represented as something heinous this is the result:
https://www.jewishdatabank.org/api/download/?studyId=1277&me...
So 90% believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, but they aren’t stupid and it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that “Zionist” has become a kind of slur in the hands of so many.
It really isn’t hard to understand, it’s just convenient for people to hide behind. You meet a white nationalist and they don’t open with a Hitlergrusse, they talk about “preserving the family” or “13/50” and so on. You didn’t invent this shit.
It makes me uncomfortable when people refer to black people as “thugs” with a wink and a nod as well. You aren’t clever for using dog whistles, it’s been a notable feature of antisemitism to “play with words” as Sartre put it.
Still if I’m to consult my subconscious… it tells me that a lot of people use causes and movements to justify the sort of bullying, hateful, trend-chasing behavior they always displayed all along. It’s when people feel they have free license to let go that you learn more about THEM.
I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?
I'm not saying new should be entirely left and right. My point is that the adversarial system will find more flaws than a more neutral system. There's plenty of time, and all sorts of in-between agencies, to point out the neutral stuffs. My point is that the existence of even super politically aligned news agencies isn't some pure bad thing, or a sign of a dictatorship. We need both. All the news agencies being aligned one way would be a VERY BAD thing. All the news agencies being aligned to some "center" would be only slightly less bad.
CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.
Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.
I’m curious about how you would objectively define “woke”. I’d also be curious about how NPR scores on those measures relative to other comparable media.
EDIT: And if you didn't mean it in that way, and were serious, consider looking at e.g. Ground News' rating of NPR: https://ground.news/interest/npr. They (and others) clearly show NPR to have (slight) left bias. This means you are almost certainly going to see woke perspectives there from time to time, and more often than other less-biased or right-biased sources.
I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.
I think it's important not to tie identity to any part of the spectrum (e.g. "I'm center left").
I have opinions on issues, and they can vary across the spectrum. On some issues (e.g. healthcare) I'm far to the left (well, in the US - would just be considered "normal" left in other countries). On things like immigration I'm either center or right (everyone seems to have their own idea of what "center" means). On gun control I'm both left and right - I'd like to outlaw them, but am opposed to some gun control initiatives.
On several social issues I can be far to the left on some and far to the right on others.
In an election, I voted both for a Green Party candidate and a Republican candidate (different offices, of course).
What I see is people who identify on the spectrum may have strong opinions on some issues (e.g. left), and then they adopt the leftist viewpoint on other issues - in order to be consistent. In my experience, these people are also more likely to follow "leaders" than be opinionated.
It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
I think it is amusing that people try to peg each news outlet as "left" or "right" as if they are an 18-year-old who votes whilst standing on a seesaw.
First, political views are not one-dimensional and so the "left"/"right" and far-extreme-ultra game is just "are they on my side or are they considered bonkers by my brethren?" games.
I believe that it's far better to consider news outlets as a product of their sponsors vs. their intended audience. By and large, they are all corporations trying to maximize revenue by attracting and maintaining a large audience for their materials, thereby paying their sponsors and advertisers the revenue they need.
So, they will produce stories that engage the audience. Whether that is enraging us, stoking controversy, appealing to us with smooth words: doesn't matter. There's no such thing as bad engagement. The corollary is that they don't want to lose audience members so any slide into supporting unpopular causes or candidates or ideologies is nipped in the bud.
Folks also can't seem to accept that editorial opinions or ideologies can shift, especially for example, if a news outlet supports "whoever/whatever is currently in power this year" or as a contrarian, opposes them, and riles up the opposition parties.
Wikipedia's relentless blacklisting and deprecation of "unreliable sources" is a great public experiment in this regard. If you really want a nice left-leaning anodyne view of the world, go with Wikipedia and "blacklist" or stop paying attention to any source they don't like.
This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
It sure feels like there are people who care about formulating and holding principles (e.g. "adultery is bad") that ought to apply to everyone, and then there are people who pretend to do the same but all the "principles" are just reflections of some ultimate virtue of loyalty/obedience, towards some hierarchy they consider existentially important.
The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit. The other will defines good/bad people, and then judge acts by which person is doing them. If you want investigative journalism, clearly group #1 is preferable.
On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.
Where "right" means specifically "Likud"
[flagged]
The other thing that is growing is the conflation of opposition to Israel’s belligerence and human rights violations with antisemitism.
[flagged]
There are vastly more Semitic people than Zionists. In fact most Zionists aren’t Semitic whatsoever.
Post truth world. Sad stuff.
What on earth are you talking about?!
Instead of asking here, go look up the definitions of Semitic people and Zionism. Really simple and straightforward answer.
No it’s not, antisemitism is not equal to criticism of Israel.
And it's definitely not for being critical of Israel's government's policies. You can believe that the Jewish people deserve to have a peaceful place to live, and also believe that what they are doing to Palestine is wrong.
So how do you interpret the accusation of American jew David Ellison to be a "pre-dictator" working for Likud?
How is that an attack on all Jews?
He's donated to and voted for candidates of both parties, and claims to be a centrist.
"Centrist" in a grassroots political perspective means one sees merit in the values generally (purportedly) held by both tribes. "Centrist" for an oligarch just means they place bets on both horses.
I don’t follow the sentiment.
Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.
Don't think about CNN specifically, but rather about one more cable news network lurching to the right. Ellison's effect on CBS News is clear.
Ah yes, but Larry Ellison is Jewish.
Literally the only difference between him and the rest of the wannabe media barons, but you could fart the word “Israel” with your armpit and get upvotes these days.
Well no, the difference is that this merger is in favor with the current administration which has engaged in a broad and pervasive pattern of authoritarian behaviors while being in lock-step with Israel's interests.
This merger is only happening because the deal that the seller actually preferred (Netflix buying them) was unlikely to be approved by regulators. The President literally came out right after the deal was approved and said "it could be a problem" and "I would have a say" in whether it went through.
In fact the very existence of Paramount Skydance itself, as a merged entity, appears to have been contingent upon Paramount modifying its own HR policies, placing a government ombudsman at their marquee journalistic outlet (CBS), and paying $16 million to Trump's "presidential library fund."
I'm not arguing any of that, obviously this all reeks of corruption and cronyism as almost everything in this admin does.
But that's not what people were focusing on here, it's a lot of "Practically Likud" and the increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle "Zionist".
If the correct label for a person's beliefs is "an increasingly uncomfortable dog whistle" umm... maybe the label isn't the problem...
When your label applies to 95% of an ethnicity maybe you’re just a bigot hiding behind a cause.
There are more American evangelicals who are Zionists than there are Jews in the entire world bro.
A weird cult existing doesn’t change tbat “Zionism” remain overwhelmingly popular among Jews. Granted since the term has been demonized and represented as something heinous this is the result: https://www.jewishdatabank.org/api/download/?studyId=1277&me...
So 90% believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, but they aren’t stupid and it’s obvious to anyone with a brain that “Zionist” has become a kind of slur in the hands of so many.
It really isn’t hard to understand, it’s just convenient for people to hide behind. You meet a white nationalist and they don’t open with a Hitlergrusse, they talk about “preserving the family” or “13/50” and so on. You didn’t invent this shit.
If it makes you uncomfortable, then your subconscious mind is trying to tell you something.
It makes me uncomfortable when people refer to black people as “thugs” with a wink and a nod as well. You aren’t clever for using dog whistles, it’s been a notable feature of antisemitism to “play with words” as Sartre put it.
Still if I’m to consult my subconscious… it tells me that a lot of people use causes and movements to justify the sort of bullying, hateful, trend-chasing behavior they always displayed all along. It’s when people feel they have free license to let go that you learn more about THEM.
More importantly he's a zionist and put bari Weiss in charge. It's pretty clear what they want to do.
[flagged]
I think the public should be able to view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets, and that is very much not happening in the US.
If - for example - you find a major news outlet that's pro-union, pro-single-payer, pro-wealth-taxes, and pro-debt-free-education, let me know.
> view true left-of-centre perspectives from mainstream media outlets
Do you think this is being prevented somehow? There are many left leaning news agencies [1]. Maybe the "problem" is that they're all for profit, most of which comes from ads, most of which are anti union companies.
What's the alternative? Mandated reporting?
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...
>>Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?
No! but where did you get that from?
There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.
It's the right wing perma-victim complex.
"We'll tell you the truth about the Dominion voting machines, which mainstream media WON'T tell you!" - Fox News, knowingly lying while also being literally the largest broadcast network in the country.
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?
Bezos with the WaPo was this until 2024.
Did it improve under Bezos? I remember finding it of poor quality before him.
You'll still only get half-truths, but maybe (maybe) the sum of the vectors will be roughly normal
I'm not saying new should be entirely left and right. My point is that the adversarial system will find more flaws than a more neutral system. There's plenty of time, and all sorts of in-between agencies, to point out the neutral stuffs. My point is that the existence of even super politically aligned news agencies isn't some pure bad thing, or a sign of a dictatorship. We need both. All the news agencies being aligned one way would be a VERY BAD thing. All the news agencies being aligned to some "center" would be only slightly less bad.
CNN nudging more towards the right doesn't somehow influence the overall left leaning spread [1], or is in any way indicative of a rising dictatorship.
[1] https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/media-literacy/2021/sh...
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
Only people on the right think NPR is on the left. NPR is the most middle of the road you can get. Just because they report facts that contradict the administration doesn't make them left leaning.
Not true at all? https://ground.news/interest/npr
Did you read the link you posted? Two of them rated it as "barely left" and one rated it "center".
And all of them rated it "highly factual"
I used to be an avid NPR listener, but after George Floyd it's astoundingly woke when I try listening. That's not very often anymore, to be fair.
I’m curious about how you would objectively define “woke”. I’d also be curious about how NPR scores on those measures relative to other comparable media.
Why do people still trot out this tired argument?
https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
EDIT: And if you didn't mean it in that way, and were serious, consider looking at e.g. Ground News' rating of NPR: https://ground.news/interest/npr. They (and others) clearly show NPR to have (slight) left bias. This means you are almost certainly going to see woke perspectives there from time to time, and more often than other less-biased or right-biased sources.
I know hard core leftists love to bash NPR/PBS, but as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person, I definitely find NPR to have a left wing bias. Not as left wing as Democracy Now, etc - but definitely left leaning.
> as a non-leftist, non-centrist, non-right wing person
I'm curious what you think your politics are then.
I think it's important not to tie identity to any part of the spectrum (e.g. "I'm center left").
I have opinions on issues, and they can vary across the spectrum. On some issues (e.g. healthcare) I'm far to the left (well, in the US - would just be considered "normal" left in other countries). On things like immigration I'm either center or right (everyone seems to have their own idea of what "center" means). On gun control I'm both left and right - I'd like to outlaw them, but am opposed to some gun control initiatives.
On several social issues I can be far to the left on some and far to the right on others.
In an election, I voted both for a Green Party candidate and a Republican candidate (different offices, of course).
What I see is people who identify on the spectrum may have strong opinions on some issues (e.g. left), and then they adopt the leftist viewpoint on other issues - in order to be consistent. In my experience, these people are also more likely to follow "leaders" than be opinionated.
The NPR front page right now has a clip from a profanity-filled interview with a drag queen.
Famously fair and balanced, I know.
Ok, and they also have the President saying Iraq should bomb Los Angeles. What is your point?
Huh?
Here are all the headlines currently above the fold on the homepage. Don't see anything about a drag queen below the fold either.
Maybe something autocorrected in your address bar when you tried to navigate to NPR?
* What happened during Christa Pike's failed execution
* Christa Pike conscious and able to speak after failed execution
* As Trump focuses the FBI on immigration, counterintelligence is falling behind
* Democrats' advantage is clear with less than a month to go in the midterm elections
* What voters in 6 key states could tell us about the 2026 midterms
* People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms
* Alaska's US Senate race collides with the pollock industry in a fight over fish
* Poll: Residents are losing faith in Vermont as a good place to start life
* In race for Tennessee governor, Blackburn refuses to debate Democrat Green
* Disney, ABC battle Trump's FCC in court over free speech protections
* New Hollywood era begins with an epic mega merger between Paramount and Warner Bros.
* She died covering war for Fox News. Her parents blame the network — and a star reporter
* Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey's new Pentagon roles raise ethics worries
* Jim Bakker, who built 'PTL Club' televangelism empire, has died at 86
* Cornell names former acting U.S. attorney general to review rape case
* Cornell students protest the university's handling of 2024 rape allegations
* Francis Halzen wins Nobel Prize in physics for work on high-energy neutrinos from space
NPR takes "both sides" reporting to an absurd extreme
Have you read the WaPo and NYT lately?
WaPo? definitely not. going through independence crisis.
NYT - i think so.
NPR - funding crisis.
The Atlantic - i don't read this - is this the one who's journalist was added in the top secret signal chat?
It's not a clear divide between right and left, and NYT, the Atlantic, and NPR stans right wing voices constantly, have constantly used their editorialization to promote right wing ideals, and have gone out of their way to center right wing voices to give the appearance of being centrist to the right, which has had a direct impact in their perception as not really left wing by any of the left.
Now the center right is supporting concentration camps like "alligator alcatraz" so the overton window has shifted a lot in the last ten years.
WaPo definitely is not with Bezos at the helm and preventing them from endorsing Harris
To the left of outright fascist propaganda? I'll give you that.
I think it is amusing that people try to peg each news outlet as "left" or "right" as if they are an 18-year-old who votes whilst standing on a seesaw.
First, political views are not one-dimensional and so the "left"/"right" and far-extreme-ultra game is just "are they on my side or are they considered bonkers by my brethren?" games.
I believe that it's far better to consider news outlets as a product of their sponsors vs. their intended audience. By and large, they are all corporations trying to maximize revenue by attracting and maintaining a large audience for their materials, thereby paying their sponsors and advertisers the revenue they need.
So, they will produce stories that engage the audience. Whether that is enraging us, stoking controversy, appealing to us with smooth words: doesn't matter. There's no such thing as bad engagement. The corollary is that they don't want to lose audience members so any slide into supporting unpopular causes or candidates or ideologies is nipped in the bud.
Folks also can't seem to accept that editorial opinions or ideologies can shift, especially for example, if a news outlet supports "whoever/whatever is currently in power this year" or as a contrarian, opposes them, and riles up the opposition parties.
Wikipedia's relentless blacklisting and deprecation of "unreliable sources" is a great public experiment in this regard. If you really want a nice left-leaning anodyne view of the world, go with Wikipedia and "blacklist" or stop paying attention to any source they don't like.
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.
This is probably my leftist bias, but ever consider that "leftists" are more interested in laws and decency whereas "rightists" are more interested in protecting their tribe/movement? But you think both sides play like "the right" (each only interested in exposing flaws of the other side) because you're seeing from your right-leaning perspective...
Democrat Al Franken got kicked out of Senate when it was found he inapproprately kissed a woman. I can name a long list of creeps in the GOP side who received protection from their side. Matt Gaetz, Roy Moore, Sexual Harassment Hegseth, Epstein-Friend in Chief. The GOP doesn't seem to have any principles about which sexual deviant they have, they just care about having the majority (in congress) or the power. Oh yeah, speaking of that, sexual assaulter Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh...
I'd trust left-leaning media to report wrongdoing whoever does it, whereas right-leaning media will gloss or bare-face lie about wrongdoing done by the right, and exaggerate about wrongdoings by the left...
It sure feels like there are people who care about formulating and holding principles (e.g. "adultery is bad") that ought to apply to everyone, and then there are people who pretend to do the same but all the "principles" are just reflections of some ultimate virtue of loyalty/obedience, towards some hierarchy they consider existentially important.
The first group will define good/bad acts and then judge people by what acts they commit. The other will defines good/bad people, and then judge acts by which person is doing them. If you want investigative journalism, clearly group #1 is preferable.
On a similar note, I highly recommend a playlist of long-form videos from ~2016, titled (in the sense of an expose) "The Alt-Right Playbook". In particular, the video "Always a Bigger Fish" [0] tries to make sense of some persistent "how can they possibly believe X but not Y" disagreements when it comes to democracy and egalitarianism.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs&list=PLJA_jUddXv...