Choosing irrelevancy and choosing untruths

Somewhat visceral, understandably, but there is a core point in Palestinian Professor on Baby in Oven: 'With or Without Baking Powder?' by David Strom.  

I frequently point out the yawning chasm between the values, behaviors and goals of mainstream journalists and the values, behaviors and goals of the American public.  It is a comparison detrimental to journalists.  Americans are generally concerned about centrist issues such as the economy, inflation, jobs, the threat of war, community safety, etc.  The issues of interest and focus of journalists such as intersectionality, critical race theory, global climate change, decolonization, etc. register at the 0-2% level of interest among the public.  

Americans are bombarded by erroneous reporting about ill-founded concerns of issues of negligible relevance.  

There is another side of the equation though, and that is what Strom is pointing out.  

There are two issues.

To what degree are mainstream media reporting on issues of relevance to the public?

To what degree are they reporting accurately on issues of relevance to the public?

In my posts I do not make a point of distinguishing the shades of difference between the two, but I think Strom is correct that there are two seperate dynamics which are worth distinguishing.  

Yes, reporters report badly on unfounded issues irrelevant to the concerns of the public.

What Strom is sort of nudging around are two realities.  

Mainstream media frequently choose to be concerned about things which are not necessarily real, material or relevant.  

Mainstream media knows that it is reporting badly and does nothing about that misreporting.  

Covid-19 shone a bright light on the misinformation and absence of critical reporting from mainstream media when serving as propaganda platforms for ill-conceived national public health actions.  October 7th in Israel is brightening the spotlight.

For more than a decade, more like two decades, we have known that Western mainstream media reporting from the West Bank and Gaza has been coopted by their hiring of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamist sympathizing stringers.  They have know that the Public Relations news outlets of these organization are persistently lacking in integrity and accuracy.  They know that much video produced by these organizations and by the stringers are not live reporting but staged enactments to dramatize events which did not even happen.  

In the October 7th instance we have both mainstream media failures on display repeatedly.

The mainstream media is choosing to believe that the Palestinians who launched the invasion are the victims.

They are choosing to report known untruths to support their first choice.

Strom is focusing on the second issue, and it is certainly worth noting.  The mainstream media (The New York Times, the BBC, etc.) and the University of Pennsylvania have both chosen to platform and publicize the views of an hateful, vitriolic, anti-semite.  They are only backing away, not because they chose poorly or because they want to be more accurate and ethical but because they received major pushback from donors and from subscribers.  

In other words, they only made a head nod towards their failure when forced to do so, not because it was the right thing to do.  

In November 2021 The New York Times provided puffball favorable coverage to a raging anti-semite without checking its own facts and was forced by readers to acknowledge their failure in an editorial note.  

In October 2023, The New York Times is still lending credence to the same raging anti-semite, treating him as a reliable source while propagating the Hamas claim that Israel bombed a Gaza hospital which was in fact the victim of Hamas rocketry.  

They are choosing to primarily report on irrelevant things and they are choosing to report untruths on relevant things.