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Here are several successive headlines for NYT coverage of the Gaza hospital blast:
The initial headline was "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say." It soon changed to "At Least 500 Dead in Strike on Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say," and then to "At Least 500 Dead in Blast at Gaza Hospital, Palestinians Say."
BBC was as bad or worse:
I remember something a wise executive said to me once:
When you're running a large organization, you're not seeing reality. It's like you're watching a movie where you only get to see maybe one out of a thousand frames, and from that you have to figure out what's going on.
If this is true of running large organizations--and to a considerable extent, it is--then it is even more true of the citizen in a large and complex country. Few people can have direct personal information as to what happened with a situation such as the Gaza hospital. They have to rely on sources--they watch a movie, using the above metaphor, and all they can see is selected frames. So the people who choose what frames are seen, and in what sequence, have enormous power.
The media is part of the feedback system of a society, and to the extent that that feedback is suppressed or distorted, bad things are likely to happen. It is as if the thermostat for your HVAC system was sending a "it's too cold" signal when it is really way too hot. Or, more vividly, as if the hydraulic elevator servos on an airliner were receiving feedback that the actual position of the elevator is 20 degrees UP when it is actually 20 degrees DOWN.
The level of ideological capture, groupthink, and lack of interest in actual truth among much of our major media is very high.
Someone at X/Twitter asked:
At what point does having recent work for nytimes, or even TechCrunch, on a resume turn into a career risk because journalistic integrity is so low? Are we there already?
My--possibly too cynical?--response to this question was:
The people doing this probably think it creates career *benefit*, because it signals a tribal identification shared by a lot of prominent media organizations.
Discussion (41)
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I saw that on X as well - and it made me think: no wonder nobody trusts them.
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Torsten Heinrich, the young German lad who does the Military and History channel on YouTube, put up a video yesterday showing proof that Israel didn't bomb the hospital. The day before he had put up a video saying he would report back if information came in showing one side or the other was fibbing, but at that point he didn't have the kind of proof he would want. (He does the same kind of reporting on the Russia-Ukraine war. Being a decent person, he's on the side of both Ukraine and Israel, but doesn't take either side's claims in either conflict at face value, because all of them are capable of lying.)
Anyhow, he spent the last half of yesterday's video lambasting the media for taking Hamas claims at face value instead of waiting for evidence to become available. He's not the first person to criticize the media, but it's interesting to hear a young German man who is usually very calm and measured do it with such vehemence.
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But don't you all worry your little heads over election integrity or vaccine safety. I'm sure we can trust our overlords to be honest, well-intentioned, competent, and informed when they tell us what to think about that.
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What the heck, it's just a little more Gell-Mann Amnesia.
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I think it's newsworthy that Baptist hospitals are in Gaza as well as rural Zimbabwe, Hong Kong, and Waco, TX.
Good job, Baptists.
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