Click bait headline generators
Great example of stupid click-bait fake news services.
Why no one believes public health any more
Pro tip! Create a scary and fake correlation by changing the Y-Axis to a log scale instead of the traditional linear scale.
National Geographic spent decades as a racist reporter of life – and that is their own conclusion
Read the story on my Travel blog: National Geographic spent decades as a racist reporter of life – and that is their own conclusion – Coldstreams Travel and Global Thinking
Public health pandemic communications has been a disaster
A public communications expert critiques the public health communication during the pandemic – and finds it to have been a total failure, and along the way, destroying trust and credibility in public health. The long-term consequence is few believe public health, with good reasons. This is not how it should have been done.
CNN dug its own grave
Cable “news” long ago morphed into entertainment with celebrity reporters and anchors, more interested in flaming emotions than informing you. The result is to divide society into angry camps. U.S. media has devolved to such an extent that it is hazardous to everyone and to the country. The latest round, with CNN’s firing of Chris Cuomo is just that – yet another round where these clowns were caught. This is what they are now – clowns.
How Twitter encourages smart people to look dumb
“Science by TwitterTM” is when smart people post things quickly without giving it necessary thought and reflection, and end saying things that are wrong or readily misconstrued. This is often followed by a string of tweets attempting to clarifying what was said.
Oh: School district compiled dossiers on parents and their children if they complained about district policies
An Arizona school district is accused of maintaining extensive dossiers on 47 parents – and their children – for having merely spoken out against district policies. The data was kept in a private but shared Google Drive folder and is said to have included names, photos, personal information, vehicle license plates, photos of children, screen captures of social media posts, and copies of legal documents such as mortgage and divorce papers.
Snopes confirms social media post and then mislabels it false
Snopes is a “fact checking” web site, also known for a co-founder who wrote fake articles for the site and plagiarized content from others, which now fact checks a social media post, finds most of it largely correct, and then labels the post “false”. They relied, in part, on a CDC report that is easily seen to have cherry picked data to produce a misleading, if not active disinformation report. But Snopes does not fact check the obvious deficiencies in the CDC report.
By cherry picking: “Billionaires’ Pandemic Profits Alone Could Cover Cost of Biden’s Build Back Better Plan”
Newsweek demonstrates yet again that it is a perennial fake news publisher by cherry picking a data series to prove their point. This is bull shit level reporting and why no one believes mainstream news reports anymore.
Classic media manipulation of your viewpoint – SF Chronicle had to rewrite headline and replace photo illustration
Over the span of a few days, the SF Chronicle went from a headline emphasizing “Winter Covid surge” to a new title emphasizing “the endgame”, and a new illustration, removing the fear and negativity focus. Sadly, the media always goes for fear and negativity and manages to spin good news into bad. This time they got caught at it.