Please read it carefully Mervin and make us aware of any corrections 
I guess I made it sound like I was about to pore over it with a fine-tooth comb looking for transgressions. We’ll try not to be that much of a police state around here! 
[I only meant that it was fascinating enough to warrant more complete reading later than what I can spare it now.]
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No problem Mervin, any corrections are to be received. But overall I thought the article was well written.
Not a biggie: I think we would say conspiracist vs Conspiratist (not to be confused with conspirator).
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Thanks Dale
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Fascinating read, Kelli! Thanks for sharing.
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Thank you DaughterOfEve for starting and opening this discussion
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@Christy that’s quite the accusation! Can you provide the data supporting that? But my opinion is that neither side is reliable.
Thanks for that @Randy!
Except for one problem: every example I gave was indeed a coordinated, massive media propaganda effort of lies or distortions or suppression of truth. I am NOT saying the other propaganda stream can be trusted.
Also I’m amazed at how often people say “conspiracy theory,” as if that will have any positive impact in a discussion!
Ah, now we’re getting at a real issue here. On this we disagree. I see both sides of these propaganda wars using only carefully selected facts, suppressing other facts, then spinning complicated narratives painting the “other” side as evil, assigning dark and sinister motives, and justifying the deep glory of their own side’s struggle for the pure and holy good. Barfo! Truth is useful to them only when it helps their narrative, but otherwise it is ignored. Regarding what “Christians believe…”, if “you’ll know them by their fruits,” both sides are fomenting hate and discord.
Vaccines are “just” a casualty of this war. We cannot fix this by focusing on vaccine science. For those here “calling out” one side in these propaganda wars, tell me you don’t spend most of your media time on the other side.
I think for both sides it’s become largely about money and power, and getting people to click again and again. They have discovered if they can make people mad and/or frightened, people will come back for more.
I pray for the millions of victims on both sides. We truly need God’s help to rescue our nation from these media wolves.
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It was all over the news. It was part of that Facebook internal intelligence leak.
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And it came out that FB algorithms prioritized posts that got the angry emoji five times higher than posts that got likes.
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There was a similar study done yeses ago with YouTube videos. The same video with the same thumbnail pic but with different names. The one I remember was of a soldier holding up a little afghan girl. It was actually a video of his dancing with her and she was giggling and so on. One video title read “soldier dances with little girl” and the other read “ soldier slams child terrorist “ or something like that. The false headliner got significantly more views.
I also think a test was done with actual new channels headliners and shows. The more outrageous and shocking the more views.
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Well … yeah! Of course our limited human attention is going to be riveted toward the “what has gone horribly wrong” situation instead of the “everything’s fine here” report. A playground duty teacher doesn’t pause on the way to break up a fight to think, “but I should really first go and compliment Johnny on how he’s been playing so well lately! … because I don’t always want to be dwelling on negative things.” No No. The fight rightly gets all the attention for the moment.
So the culpability here belongs 100% to the headline producers (if indeed they are false headlines). It’s as if somebody was pulling the fire-alarm to get your attention just so they can chat with you (or even worse and more likely: continue to lie and propagandize you). Such people or organizations need to be punished by having their stream/channel/“news” source … whatever sidelined and ignored.
… or even better yet: shut down. I guess I would add that we readers do begin to share in the blame when we continue to click on and spread such sources to our friends, ourselves then taking up the work of spreading the original lie. Satan has many willing [enthusiastic] helpers.
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“It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people.”
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FactCheck.org is a wonderful resource for getting to the truth. It was recommended by my library. Or do we not trust libraries?
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So how do you personally determine what is the truth? What are some good sources of information? How can you tell? Is the Discovery Institute a good and reliable source of information?
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It is frustrating how some articles technically report factual data in such a way as to make a casual reader reach the wrong conclusion, knowing that most readers either will not bother or do not have the experience needed to look into the real story. The numbers may be factual, but used in such a way as to be deceptive. An example is how an article might talk of rising deaths due to Covid after the release of a vaccine, when in truth the ones dying are unvaccinated, but the implication is that the vaccine is causing the deaths.
We then have well meaning and basically good people believing and repeating these things. Paul had some things to say about it:
Test all things; hold fast what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21
as did Jesus:
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves…Matthew 7:15
and Luke:
Love must be sincere. Detest what is evil; cling to what is good. Romans12:9
or here is a dozen more:14 Top Bible Verses About False Teachers - Scripture Warnings
If only we could convince people that what is good on Sunday is also applicable Monday through Saturday.
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Supermarket tabloids for free on your phone, but what a cost. Sensationalistic ‘journalism’ hasn’t gone away. Hardly.
I feel like breathing a small sigh of relief that I don’t recognize anything on this list except Guideposts (the magazine), but not in Facebook format.
The whole media-related segment of this thread does bring to mind a problem/question that Is starting to take clearer shape in my mind. We need to start asking ourselves and each other for clear definitions on what we mean by “media”, “main stream media” “alternative media/news” “____ media you foolishly believe that I know is full of lies”, AND we need to grasp that humans (at least at this time) are forcing binaries where there are none.
Much of what people who come here read is hardly “mainstream.” Digging up the lab reports to see if they were misquoted, reading them, getting help from the people who really do understand the lab reports; going to Johns Hopkins’ covid data sites regularly, learning to use them, gleaning data from them to make decisions; having a serious conversation with one’s doctor and asking clarifying questions; Looking at the data reporting from my local health department and learning to understand the ways the data are charted; bothering to review what natural logs are so I can understand how to read the early covid charts that were shown in log form to be more understandable, etc. None of these examples of information gathering are relying on any kind of “media”. This is research. It’s not binary. It’s not liberal or conservative. It’s not “christian” or “godless”. It is hard work.
So, when I hear people getting hot under the collar about conclusions I’ve drawn from work I’ve put in following up some claim, and they holler “That’s just liberal media bias!” I really need to know what they mean by “Liberal” and “media” and “bias.” Because it doesn’t reflect the work I’ve done.
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I’m a librarian. I love libraries. I trust many of them. I check the claims of those I find iffy.
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