Long before we scrolled, we skimmed. The headlines are supposed to give you the story “in a nutshell”. That and the first sentence, that is there to tell you who did what when, where and ‘why’.
Except of course, it’s always more complicated than that – but these are the myths journalists like to believe about themselves, and like everyone else to believe.
One of the entertaining things about the rise of social media is the pushback against the modes (of writing, of thought) of the ‘legacy’ media. In Olden Times you had to write a letter to the editor, and it likely wouldn’t get published. Nowadays though, you can tweet about it. See below.
https://twitter.com/monaeltahawy/status/1831712389525361077
And on the same day, the truly dreadful Telegraph, which seems to somehow find new lows each month, had this
For fuck’s sake. As per this tweet.
So, what do we learn?
That the Propaganda Model of Herman and Chomsky is good insofar as it goes, but there are other horrendous forms of systemic bias (race, class, gender, ableism) that need looking into. I need to read this at some point –
What can we do?
- Amplify the smart people pointing this out, even if it’s just a retweet
- Be kind on ourselves when we fail to notice it, but also firm about getting better at noticing it. This is a collective endeavour, a hard one to do in our atomised/Hobbesian/neoliberal times. So it goes.
marchudson.net 
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