Here’s an eight-minute Real Time bit in which Bill Maher goes after the media for blowing up the campus protests out of proportion. To counteract this trend, Maher proposes five rules for proper journalistic coverage of the news.
One such rule is that the media should stay away from quoting the “angriest people on social media with too much time on their hands.” Tell me about it!
At the end of the bit, Maher answers the question, “What do we do if he wins?” (The “he” is obvious.)
Thank you for the belly laughs. You made my day.
🎯 He is so right.
It was a good monologue. Funny and incisive.
Bill Maher knows “how to lie with statistics” is still … lying. And yes, he’s right, about both sides. Still, something is wrong with a country where the host of a comedy show is the one who is the most reasonable person available…
…and yes OF COURSE he was doing the same sins he was bashing (“chances are you won’t fall out of an airplane with a missing door,” “the guy who looks like he’s jerking off two guys…”) – only he is not supposed to be an objective news source, he is SUPPOSED to roast people and be funny.
Great!
Some of the others that the media jumped the gun or spun and got wrong:
Covington kid
Border patrol whipping border illegal crossers
Twitter didn’t shadow ban and acted independently
Maher’s right – no matter who wins, it won’t be the end of the world. This is not the most important election in the history of the US. Gulags won’t be built if Trump wins, and it’s doubtful he can enact anything. If Kennedy wins, vaccines won’t be illegal.
We are being manipulated by the media who is working in conjunction with the state or other entities to give us the message they want us to hear. Working loosely in communications, one of the things we measure is the % of news outlets that report the key points of stories that we send out about our product. Target to get our bonus is to hit 98% alignment. We send out press releases, and provide access to a couple of executives, and then measure results. The journos write stories as if they came up with the ideas themselves, but they’re just rewriting what we give them. Outlets that don’t report inaccurately or take too much of a different approach from what we want are cut off from future access. The best is when we see a report that says, “ABCD.com reports that…”, when in fact it’s our own release that they’re reporting on! This goes on all over the place. If you pay attention to it, it’s something you never miss again. Political, entertainment, new product, and most other larger stories are the same – they all stem from one entity that puts out the narrative. 10 outlets all report the same thing – that’s because they were all given the same story in the first place!
Why did People or TMZ just happen to catch some movie star at LAX or out shopping (They’re just like us – they shop!)? Because their agent called some outlet to give them the story.
And don’t get me started on “influencers”!
And outlets that have whoopsie typos? 🙂
Oops is right!!! Thanks!
Strike that, reverse it