Lifted from the comments, a reminder, were one needed, that you don’t despise the media anywhere near enough.
In this case, it’s Flemish public television – not unlike our own BBC – and one guest’s realisation that any discussion of rising intolerance and a growing enthusiasm for violence against women must arrive at certain predetermined conclusions, regardless of the facts:
Eventually, a young editor sent me a brief PowerPoint presentation that had been circulating internally. To my surprise, every chart contained a bar for respondents of “foreign origin,” alongside the categories for age and education. Less surprisingly, that bar was often the highest of all. The internal presentation even drew attention to the elevated levels of intolerance among respondents of foreign origin—several times.
Then I noticed a marginal comment from a VRT editor that was clearly not intended for outside eyes.
It instructed the news desk not to report the breakdown by foreign origin, even though the data had been collected.
The seemingly routine attempt to deceive does rather invalidate the ostensible core function of this publicly funded organisation. It throws everything they do into question. How could one possibly trust them? It quite literally wipes out their credibility as a broadcaster. And by extension, any claim to public funding or favoured status.
In a saner world, it would be the end of them.
I say ostensible function because it’s not altogether obvious – to say the least – how one could reconcile some supposed broadcaster’s mission to convey the facts, and to bring into being an informed citizenry, with doing everything possible to prevent precisely that.
And doing so in a manner one might regard as practised.
Update, via the comments:
Should anyone assume that our own BBC is any more trustworthy in this regard, by all means think again. Do note the willingness of senior BBC employees to lie, repeatedly. Brazenly. Supposedly in the name of some fluffy and fragrant tomorrow. As if we should be grateful for their efforts to deceive us.
Update 2:
In light of the above, it may be worth revisiting this gathering of Canadian media luminaries, at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, where much bewilderment is expressed regarding the public’s supposedly inexplicable dislike of journalists:
Indeed, almost any kind of demurral is framed as an attempt to “silence” the journalists’ self-declared heroism, to deny them their cosmic destiny. And hence, it seems, the imperative to shut down reader-comment sections on national newspaper websites, on grounds that readers are no longer content to confine their feedback to the polite correction of typos.
Throughout, the air is heavy with self-elevation, and claims of being scrupulously unbiased and “speaking truth to power” are deployed entirely without irony.
However, the more plausible explanations for why journalists may not be held in the highest possible regard remain oddly untouched. Even when Hill Times columnist and “anti-racism expert” Erica Ifill boasts that she doesn’t bother to interview white men.
And the implications of a room full of statusful media professionals being fixated with the supposed pathologies of “whiteness,” and being pretentious and neurotic, and mentally uniform – and both distant from and disdainful of the concerns of the public that they claim to serve – are, needless to say, not vigorously explored.
Readers amused by eye-widening self-flattery will find much to entertain.
Update 3:
In the comments, Martin D notes the BBC link, above, and adds,
What’s surprising, I suppose, even to the cynical, is the realisation that the omissions and bias aren’t just a result of carelessness or some subconscious preference, but are actively engaged in. Knowingly. By people – broadcasters – who are terribly progressive and therefore happy to lie.
Again, with the implication that it’s being done for our own good. As if we, the public, should be grateful for their efforts to deceive us.
I should add that the BBC has very recently admitted a correlation of migrant status and crime, albeit belatedly – very belatedly – and while trying to downplay the full extent of the phenomenon, again in ways that are deceptive.
And all it took was other people doing the job the BBC wouldn’t – while being badmouthed for it by the BBC and other mainstream media – and years of stabbings, assaults, child grooming, murders and rapes. Oh, and an attempted beheading or two.
170,000 offences in one year alone. That’s 473 arrests per day. Or if you prefer, one every three minutes.
Our betters, you know.
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So progressive!
‘Trust us’ they say . . . while showing themselves untrustworthy.
FAILURE TO PRETEND DETECTED!
FAILURE TO PRETEND DETECTED!
FAILURE TO PRETEND DETECTED!
See, you’ve set off the bloody alarm.
[ Fetches damp tea towel. ]
From a recent thread:
Not entirely unrelated, I’d say.
Can’t believe I’m here, toiling at the weekend.
I should be out playing golf or something.
.
The notion of you swanning about in plus-fours simply isn’t bearable on a Saturday.
And in other seamless integration news.
Following circulation of the video, the Muhammadan gentlemen are no longer employed by Harrow council.
I did once play golf, as a sweaty teen. If memory serves, it did not go well.
This New Republican thing could get interesting. No way to tell how serious it is but it does seem like an opportunity for the Irish Republicans to seize power. They are not as averse to terrorism as the Unionists/Orange/Protestants/whatevers, and likely still hold significant animosity towards those on either side who brought/bought some relative peace to that shithole area. The opportunity is there to gain considerable popular support, especially from the younger people in the middle who have no living memory of The Troubles, as they were called.
Said to the Other Half, just now, following some particularly brutal (but not entirely unfunny) mockery on his part: “I can get this shabby treatment on the blog, you know.”
Democrats, and the left in general but..just Democrats for now:
Trust us to manage everything! We’re the smaaart ones! We know how to deal with everything in dynamic, infinite variable environments! Also Democrats:
OK, admittedly huge ignorance on my part but even knowing nothIng* about what the plan, nor the plan for the plan is, there is no f’n way these people should be trusted. Amazed that this appears to be a BBC person asking the question. If she’s not careful someone could mistake her for someone who is not a journalist. Not a journalist in the modern sense anyway.
*If I did know any of this however, I would pull my hypothetical monkey out of that hypothetical circus ASAP. Apparently some people even in y’alls government have.
[ Opens notebook. Writes “not Scottish.” ]
How are you at tennis?
Imagine someone really bad at playing tennis. But worse.
Speaking of which.
Note the willingness of senior BBC employees to lie, repeatedly. Brazenly. Supposedly in the name of some fluffy and fragrant tomorrow.
[ Post updated. ]
[ Opens notebook. Crosses out “not Scottish.” Writes “probably Scottish”. ]
A “fluffy and fragrant tomorrow” would contain no BBC employees.
Words I never expected to see in conjuction:
Are throw pillows involved?
Somehow the use of the word cadaver has an… inevitability.
Such wondrous times we live in.
At school, I was half-decent at table tennis, but, for me, the skills, such as they were, just didn’t scale up.
Like badminton. I was hilariously bad at that, too. Like sit-com bad.
Nope, vagina is the innie part of the naughty bits, and unless she is trying to impress gynecologists, nobody else would see the remodeling short of an endoscopic OnlyFans. The word is collective word for the outie bits is vulva and those have been tinkered with by plastic surgeons for years.
This came to mind. On the public’s supposedly inexplicable dislike of journalists:
There’s more at the link.
About that ‘inexplicable dislike‘ . . .
[ Post updated again. ]
Nine o’clock on a Saturday night and I’m here, toiling away for you heathens.
TOILING, I SAY.
[ Slurps fortifying glass of red. ]
[ Mixes a second gin and tonic. Places it in front of empty chair. Gestures. ]
Yet another new STD. Guess how it’s spreading.
If stupid white peoples would just understand boundaries and not be driving around Houston buying gasoline, things like this wouldn’t happen, Boo-Boo.
What kind of a rayciss country is this, that a black man can’t commit armed robbery, steal a truck, and shoot someone dead? This means war! No justice no peace!
I’ve been reading up on some anthropology. In a true patriarchal society, up to 20-30% of women are in multi-wife marriages (Polygamy). To maintain clan/tribe unity, men marry off daughters to key individuals to obtain alliances or to keep them in the clan. If a woman’s husband dies, she must marry his brother, if possible, or his male cousin if not. Marriage to cousins is common. Older men in the clan can discipline younger members, even not their children. Such societies used to be the norm worldwide and still are in areas dominated by tribal customs.
For women to claim that modern western society is a patriarchy is simply nonsense. It is the farthest from a patriarchy humanity has ever gone.
But if they say it, repeat it over and over and over again, say it loudly, shame and silence anyone who says otherwise, it becomes the truth. The powers of the Gods of the Copybook Headings are generally limited to the future and to mechanical and economic concerns. The present and the past can be whatever the loudest and most persistent say it is.
Polychromatic interlude.
Oh, now that’s just bull.
I shouldn’t be shocked but I am. They’re shameless.
Brits at the World Cup experience American heat.
German guy realizes that the European mind really can’t comprehend the real America.
Film at 11.
It’s the realisation that the omissions and bias aren’t just a result of carelessness or some subconscious preference, but are actively engaged in. Knowingly. By people – broadcasters – who are terribly progressive and happy to lie.
Again, with the implication that it’s being done for our own good. As if we, the public, should be grateful for their efforts to deceive us.
Not just the BBC, of course, SKY News too. And if anyone imagines that Channel 4 wouldn’t stoop to such deceptions, I have a bridge to sell.
I should add that the BBC has very recently admitted a correlation of migrant status and crime, albeit belatedly – very belatedly – and while trying to downplay the full extent of the phenomenon, again in ways that are deceptive.
And all it took was other people doing the job the BBC wouldn’t – while being badmouthed for it by the BBC and other mainstream media – and years of stabbings, assaults, child grooming, murders and rapes. Oh, and an attempted beheading or two.
170,000 offences in one year alone. That’s 473 arrests per day. Or if you prefer, one every three minutes.
Our betters, you know.
[ Post updated one more time. ]
Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning and I’m here, toiling away for you heathens.
TOILING, I SAY.
It’s four AM
Fear is gone
I’m sitting here waiting
The gun still warm
Maybe my connection is tired of taking chances
And in thing-that-never-happens news.
Enrichment ahoy.
And another.
Because hey, it’s been days since we’ve had one.
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do.
— Confiteor Prayer
Well, sorry, but we’ve run out of colors and patterns for ribbons. It will just have to find some other way towards performative awareness.
Freddy has become a national hero. I am predicting a White House invitation before he returns home.
Meanwhile, it seems Japanese “journalists” are as bad as those in the rest of the world as “why” is never addressed.
One recurring annoyance is how activists will say “They’re just like us!” while pointing at quiet responsible gays, but simultaneously demand tolerance and respect–approval, even–for the grossly promiscuous, the predatory, and the publicly perverted.