Last night a missile hit a farm in a remote area of Poland near the Ukrainian border, killing two people. Before anyone had the opportunity to investigate what had actually happened, some Western media outlets ran panic-inducing pieces suggesting Putin was testing NATO’s boundaries.
I saw the news late last night, and my first thought was “what kind of deliberate Russian military attack would only kill TWO people?”
That didn’t stop the “expert” on the news channel brought in for comment from claiming that this was clearly Putin laying a clever distraction from his failures in Ukraine to intentionally involve NATO and escalate the war.
I closed the video and thought, “Yeah. I’ll check back on this tomorrow when we actually know something.”
Modern News Reporting in a nutshell. Take a smidgeon of information, extrapolate out a narrative and full intention, then if you’re proven wrong never mention your original reporting again.
Well said. Scaremongering as clickbait is particularly irresponsible. I don't think it could trigger WWIII though. I wonder if it doesn't end up serving a different agenda: whip up hysteria and fear to get more people in the West to say "look, this is getting too dangerous, we need to take a step back and push Ukraine to negotiate before this gets out of hand."
One could only hope, but there is no longer a conscientious delay in reporting friendly fire (using the term generically for all allies) until weapons or bullets are traced. The journalistic requirement to affirm assumptions has supplanted the punctilious need for thoughtful deliberation. The process should be to stop, think, deliberate then confirm but the response now is to simply "run with it" and deal with the fallout later or to never deal with it at all. All this does is perpetuate apathy and distrust and loss of viewership. It's a lame-duck model and I can't comprehend why legacy media are too out of touch to reverse course. Glad to be here and not there.
As I write, Radio 3 is playing the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G. Very suspicious in my opinion. Surely, some action should be taken against those responsible. I feel it is important to record this just in case my neighbours overhear and report me to Twitter.
I saw the news late last night, and my first thought was “what kind of deliberate Russian military attack would only kill TWO people?”
That didn’t stop the “expert” on the news channel brought in for comment from claiming that this was clearly Putin laying a clever distraction from his failures in Ukraine to intentionally involve NATO and escalate the war.
I closed the video and thought, “Yeah. I’ll check back on this tomorrow when we actually know something.”
Modern News Reporting in a nutshell. Take a smidgeon of information, extrapolate out a narrative and full intention, then if you’re proven wrong never mention your original reporting again.
Well said. Scaremongering as clickbait is particularly irresponsible. I don't think it could trigger WWIII though. I wonder if it doesn't end up serving a different agenda: whip up hysteria and fear to get more people in the West to say "look, this is getting too dangerous, we need to take a step back and push Ukraine to negotiate before this gets out of hand."
One could only hope, but there is no longer a conscientious delay in reporting friendly fire (using the term generically for all allies) until weapons or bullets are traced. The journalistic requirement to affirm assumptions has supplanted the punctilious need for thoughtful deliberation. The process should be to stop, think, deliberate then confirm but the response now is to simply "run with it" and deal with the fallout later or to never deal with it at all. All this does is perpetuate apathy and distrust and loss of viewership. It's a lame-duck model and I can't comprehend why legacy media are too out of touch to reverse course. Glad to be here and not there.
As I write, Radio 3 is playing the Rachmaninoff Prelude in G. Very suspicious in my opinion. Surely, some action should be taken against those responsible. I feel it is important to record this just in case my neighbours overhear and report me to Twitter.