The mainstream media as an enemy of the people

From Cancel Culture Takes a Big "L": The press tries and fails to hype a crisis into existence over Dave Chappelle's new Netflix special by Matt Taibbi.

Taibbi has really been hammering, appropriately, the mainstream media for their evolution into the propaganda department of the Manderin Class, focused on suppressing embarrassing stories (Hunter Bidne's laptop(s)), attempting to hide popular sentiment (representing chants of "Fuck Joe Biden" as "Let's Go Brandon"), hyping panic porn (Covid-19) and refusing to investigate facts which might run counter to their preferred ideological narrative.

In this instance, all the mainstream media outlets hyped a supposed protest of Netflix employees against a recent David Chappelle production.  

This echoes the supposed January 6th protest last month involving, supposedly and depending on which media outlet you listened to, 100's of thousands of right wing authoritarian kooks.  Then as we drew nearer to the planned event, 10,000s.  Then hundreds.

In the end, reporters from the mainstream media outnumbered undercover FBI agents who in turn outnumbered the few actual protesters.

Here is Taibbi's account of the Netflix protest.

First, there were the numbers. Over the course of the last week, news commentators predicted a huge demonstration of Netflix employees in protest of comedian Dave Chappelle’s The Closer special, with Yahoo! typifying coverage. “Reports say that one thousand Netflix employees — nearly 10% of the company’s workforce,” they wrote, “are planning an October 20 walkout to protest the Chappelle special.”

The Hollywood Reporter did say “at least one thousand” were planning on participating in a “virtual walkout,” whatever that is, but noted the story first came out in The Verge, which talked about a “company-wide” demonstration. Others followed, mostly without any hint that any of the reporters involved talked to anyone at Netflix but the demonstration’s organizers.

Nobody checked, because everyone liked the narrative as was. As a result, “at least one thousand” became gospel, via headlines like Gizmodo’s “1,000 Netflix Employees Are Reportedly Planning Walkout to Protest New Chappelle Special,” or The Independent inviting us to “watch live” as “more than one thousand Netflix employees are set to walk out of their jobs on Wednesday.”

By this Wednesday, October 20th, the day of the planned walkout, the story became “hundreds of Netflix employees and supporters are expected” to show up (CNN). Then, as the event started, it became “hundreds of protesters stood in solidarity with” Netflix’s employees, per The Daily Beast, for instance. Then NBC told us “Hundreds rally outside Netflix,” where protesting employees who lined up outside were “met with roaring applause.”

How many employees walked out? Not one news organization put the real number in a headline.

It seems broadly agreed that the number of Netflix walkout protesters was at most in the dozens.  A few dozen killjoy ideologues versus 12,100 employees overall.  Far fewer people than in an average wedding (167).  The mainstream media wanted something dramatic to make the case that America is overwhelmingly actively prejudiced against trans people.  Instead, the employees confirmed that people are simply not as concerned by fringe and disputed social issues as are the mainstream media.