I frequently refer to our legacy mainstream media as practicing press-release journalism or copy-and-paste journalism whereby they simply copy-and-paste or lightly rewrite the press release or other information from advocacy groups and NGOs. It is a far cheaper business model than actually investing in on the ground reporting or, heaven forbid, research reporting. And with their collapsed revenue (loss of advertising and loss of readers/viewers), they need a cheaper way of creating content than the old model of researching and reporting journalism.
This particular column by Singal is an example of the phenomenon but explores its implications further.
He notices that CNN, in reporting on a transgender story out of the National Health Service in the UK, using a distinct phrasing which is 1) unusual, 2) counterfactual, and 3) which he recollects having seen before in their reporting.
As myself and a number of others pointed out, the article contains a sentence that is, in context, rather wild: John [Tara John, the CNN reporter] writes that “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender — the gender by which one wants to be known.” But of course, whether youth gender medicine is medically necessary and evidence-based is exactly the thing being debated, and anyone who has been following this debate closely knows that every national health system that has examined this question closely, including the NHS, has come to the same conclusion: the evidence is paltry. That’s why so many countries, including Sweden, Finland, the UK, and Norway have significantly scaled back access to these treatments for youth.1 So it’s very strange to see this sentence, which reads as though it comes from an activist press release, published in a news article in CNN, an outlet that generally adheres to the old-school divide between news and opinion.
Good catch on Singal's part.
“Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender — the gender by which one wants to be known.”
Three howlers. "Medically necessary" is an opinion without substance. Feasible? - yes. Necessary? - Well, that's the active debate and the balance of evidence over the past five years has swung increasingly sharply towards the conclusion that while the treatments to make the transition are possible, that there are complications which make such practice unwise. One issue being that children are not cognitively and psychologically positioned to make such irreversible decisions and the second issue being that much of sexual identity orientation is complicated by confounding psychological issues. Most countries which invested the most in exploring the issue have concluded that there is insufficient evidence of benefit and too much evidence of harm to sustain gender-affirming care.
The second howler is "evidence-based care." At the beginning of the trans campaign some five years ago, one could have at best have claimed "evidence-informed care." At best. Even then the evidence was thin on the ground and quite mixed. But as the research has gotten more structured and disciplined, it has become increasingly clear that gender-affirming care as it is currently practiced, for most individuals, improves nothing and often makes things much worse.
The final howler in that one sentence is "a multidisciplinary approach." Multidisciplinary suggesting many viewpoints and perspectives. What has been in evidence has been motivated fanaticism which ignores that which is incontrovertible and advocates that which is contested. It is a field dominated by Eric Hoffer's True Believers.
Singal is correct to bring attention to this cognitive toxin. That the sentence could be written and published the first time is somewhat remarkable given the three howlers. That it is used repeatedly is astounding. And that is what Singal investigates.
He finds thirty-five instances in less than two years in which CNN has used the identical or very close variants of the howler-sentence. Multiple reporters, multiple stories, on a sustained basis over two years.
This is certainly not reporting. And it really doesn't feel like economic model driven press-release journalism. This feels like advocacy on the part of someone or something within CNN.
So what is going on? If it is not economics driven press-release journalism, is it advocacy? Is CNN a sleeper trans organization? Sounds absurd. But the pattern is too strong to ignore.
The only explanation I have is that this is an editorial appeasement strategy on the part of CNN. Trans advocates have demonstrated fairly strident and kinetic actions in their public advocacy including threats of economic, career and personal danger. Perhaps
“Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender — the one the person was designated at birth — to their affirmed gender — the gender by which one wants to be known.”
Is CNN's effort to immunize themselves from the wrath of the trans mob. An inoculation against danger from the advocates. Possibly at the insistence of CNN's legal department?
That seems a pretty weak supposition to me but still viable.
Singal's Doesn't have a ready explanation but he does have an interesting insight which I think extends beyond this trans issue.
It’s a pattern, unfortunately. Many outlets dug themselves into a deep hole on this issue by simply acting as stenographers and megaphones for activist groups rather than doing their jobs. And now that there is ever-mounting evidence undercutting the loudest activist claims, climbing out of this hole is going to be awkward. But there’s no other option, really. Because right now there’s absolutely no reason to take CNN.com seriously on this issue — the site has proven, demonstrably, that it doesn’t take itself seriously on this issue.
My supposition is that legacy mainstream media, in their search for cheap content, have resorted to unadulterated press-release journalism. Their content is sourced from motivated advocacy groups and NGOs, from academia and from State Agency interests. It is lightly rewritten.
All of that is I think a reasonably defendable description of what we see happening. Singal extends it by observing that individual journalists and the press institutions themselves become hostage to advocacy groups and NGOs, from academia and from State Agency interests because they are so dependent on cheap content.
An interested party or community infiltrate and/or establish advocacy groups and NGOs, as well as academia and State Agency interests, and shape an agenda. They start producing content. Legacy mainstream media starts recycling that content as a cheap necessity and as documented by Singal.
But once this begins to happen, they essentially lock themselves into the longer term agenda of the advocacy groups and NGOs, as well as academia and State Agency interests. And once they are locked into the third-party content generator agenda, it is, as Singal points out, increasingly difficult to disentangle themselves even if the real world evidence against the agendas becomes overwhelming.
And we are seeing more and more of this all the time. It is easy to assume that the legacy mainstream media are all steeped in derivative Marxism (Social Justice Theory, Critical Race Theory, Postmodernism, Deconstructionism, Intersectionalism, Gender Theory, Economic Inequality Theory, etc.), when in fact it may simply reflect economic need. It is the advocacy groups and NGOs, academia and State Agency interests, who are steeped in those derivative Marxism movements. They produce the content (press releases, flawed research, etc.) which is then simply consumed whole by the legacy mainstream media.
Some of these groups and interests are passing. Some become a self-sustaining movement. Self-sustaining in the sense that they find a way for governments to use their taxing authority to sustain them.
Think of some of these movements. All without evidence, without broad support, all without actual need (i.e. they are not solving a clearly defined and agreed upon problem.)
Anthropogenic Global WarmingMeToo MovementDEIESGTrans movementAdvocacy for illegal immigrantsDecarbonizationNet ZeroEqual Pay for Equal Work
Covid OriginsMask UseLockdownsMueller ReportRussia Collusion
And so on. Once you begin to look for it, virtually everything you see in the papers is lightly rewritten content from advocacy groups and NGOs, as well as academia and State Agency interests. Content which serves financial and ideological interests.
And which legacy mainstream media are financially powerless to resist. They need that cheap content. Even if it is contradicted by the facts.
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