I’m old-fashioned. To me, “misinformation” is better known as lies, twaddle, tall tales, yarns, and B.S. And the much-ballyhooed drive to contain it–well, that’s more mouth-farts.
For instance!
In 2014 Malaysian Flight 370 disappeared on its way from Kuala Lampur to Peking. A couple hundred passengers were never seen again.
Well, YouTube has an image (which I can’t reproduce here) of a virtually intact Malaysian 370 airliner peacefully sitting on the bottom of the ocean. Only two prombles with that. 1) They haven’t actually found that airplane, let alone taken pictures of it. 2) So the jet airplane crashes into the ocean at a damned fast clip… and doesn’t break in pieces? There shouldn’t been wreckage all over the surface of the ocean, which search planes would have eventually spotted. It does not wind up sitting in one peace on the ocean floor.
Nor does it land 35 years later with 92 skeletons on board!
(Yeah, that was another YouTube come-on. Sure are some funny things happening with jet airliners!)
All of this is lies, tall tales, piffle, and B.S. But you don’t see anybody trying to shut down those stories. Heck no! It’s only “misinformation” if it comes from Republicans and tends to hurt the Democrat scheme for devouring America. When was the last time you saw Democrat politicians and noozies accused of spreading “misinformation”? Well, okay, we accuse them all the time. But who on Capitol Hill listens to the plebs?.
Flight 370 went down somewhere. To say they’re about to fish it out of Lake Hopatcong, NJ, would be to disseminate misinformation. But you could certainly say it on YouTube and no one would ever suggest not allowing you to say it.
You just can’t say the 2020 election was crooked.
MH 370 seems to live on forever. I have my opinions, and I believe that it was one of those tragedies which probably couldn’t have been prevented. For YouTube click-baiters to come up with misleading photos, portending to be from the bottom of the ocean is beneath contempt.
I’ve seen a crashed airliner, Continental 1713, close up, and believe me, it’s a sobering sight. Intact, an airliner looks pretty robust, but the structure has to be light, and once the integrity of a semi-monocoque structure is compromised, a proud airliner will quickly come to resemble a crushed aluminum can. I don’t have a photo, but I don’t need one, the image is etched into my mind, indelibly.
These YouTube creators are seeking minutes watched, and nothing more or less. That is how they are paid, and that is why many channels will lure in a viewer with promise of interesting information, only to “bury the lead”, and turn a simple story into a convoluted excursion into history that doesn’t require being covered. I’ve clicked out of many YouTube videos while uttering “you just ran out of time”, for this very reason.
Many of these content creators are ignorant of the facts, but YouTube is thinking only of ad revenue, and doesn’t care. They hinder, or outright ban, material that is not, in their estimation, politically palatable to their audience. Information regarding the 2020 election is a good example. I find it laughable that people have had to coin the term “unalive” to get past the YouTube censors. I’ve watched a number of videos about the rape conviction of actor Danny Masterson, and they have to tiptoe around the “R-word” or face possible demonetization of their video.
I’ve met some religious fanatics in my day, who would scorn even the mention of alcohol, but the current mindset at YouTube goes far beyond this. Laughable is the best word I can think of.
I’ve also watched with interest a number of videos about the arrest of a Long Island man, who has been charged in the death of four “sex workers” (we can’t use the P-word to describe their occupation, now can we?) whose remains were discovered on a beach, on Long Island. The verbal contortions used to euphamise these events are laughable. There have been gruesome discoveries along this span of oceanfront for years, and assuming the veracity of the police’s press releases, it appears that they have charged a very solid suspect, in at least four of these deaths. It’s a terrible, horrid situation, and if indeed this man is proven guilty, we all deserve a sigh of relief, but the stilted language that must be used all but destroys the meaning of this. Sadly, in this case, many of the remains are so old, and so far gone, that they may not be able to make a case for some of the other deaths, but circumstantial evidence would make the current suspect a logical suspect in at least some of the other deaths.
When I was ten years old, I used to watch the NBC News, the Huntley and Brinkley Report, faithfully. I know; that was unusual. But I watched it, and saw reports of the Vietnam war, as it unfolded. Even at ten years of age, I knew that I was seeing something bad, and I knew that older cousins had enlisted, to avoid having their choices made for them by the Draft Board, and at least one cousin ended up in Vietnam. I had good reason for my interest, and I wasn’t handed a sanitized version of the facts. I saw the film clip of a Vietnamese terrorist being shot in the head, at point blank range, just like everyone else, and it didn’t warp my mind. I also learned the backstory, and as horrible as that clip was, the events leading up to it were many, many times worse.
Give me the facts, in plain English, and let me handle that info as I see fit. Parents should supervise their children’s Internet activity, and serve as censors, if they feel that material viewed is not what they want their children exposed to. I do not expect, nor desire, YouTube’s version of censorship. I appreciate that they do not allow sexually explicit material, because there are plenty of places for that sort of thing, and I have no desire to visit such sites, but leave the political censorship to the viewer’s discretion, please.
Given the state of nooze today, I sometimes feel ashamed that I was ever a “journalist.”
I agree. What we have now is total disorder. It used to be that newspapers and television networks staked their reputations on the integrity and accuracy. When I was a kid, NBC news was well respected. These days, I don’t trust any single news source. Even news sources I have a degree of trust in seem to have become a bit flexible in their standards.
One aspect of this is that now, almost every person is walking around with a smartphone, which is to say that they have a video recorder in their pocket. Just in the last several days, this has become quite interesting, because Friday afternoon, a man protesting in front of a building owned by an organization which claims religious status, and is suspected of terrible abuses was arrested. This protester was struck by a man who appeared to be a paid shill and had appeared at several other protests, sometimes wielding a cane, and with a dog that had apparently been used to menace protesters. The police arrested both men, but surveillance video from nearby businesses seems to have led the police to prosecute the alleged shill, and release the protester without so much as booking him.
What makes this notable, is that there were numerous other people on site taking videos of everything that happened, and posting these to YouTube and TikTok in real time. The names and email addresses of officers involved were published, along with their photos. There is a promised false arrest suit in the works, and abundant video evidence of everything that happened, from multiple angles. Oh yeah, one other thing, the arresting officer is a known member and promoter of the organization in question. Children; can you say “career ending move”? In this case, the local police are reputed to be in the pocket of this organization, by way of security guard jobs which pay very, very well, during off hours.
So, what would normally have been a routine arrest after an assault, to keep all parties in sight, while everything is being investigated, has gained national attention, and will probably result in a major police scandal. Such power was reserved for major newspapers or television networks, in the past, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see some serious shake ups for a huge police department coming out of this.
Do these things have an effect? Well, last night, the same protestors were in front of another building owned by this self-styled organization and the police were again called, with a vague complaint of some threat. The protestors were neither angry or violent, but this organization claimed to be in peril. Several police officers arrived, and formed a protective line in front of the organization’s building. These were photographed, identified and their information, as well as their incomes and police email addresses were published, in real time, as this was happening.
They were waiting for a sergeant to arrive, and when he did, he apparently asked them to meet him offsite for a quick conference. They all left the immediate area, quite rapidly, and were videoed beating a hasty retreat. This organization has a history of calling the police, claiming bomb threats, and the like, and I suspect that the sergeant involved concluded that this was not credible, and thought better of what they were doing there.
So, there was news in 1965, Huntley and Brinkley, and news in 2024, dozens of people with a video record of everything that happened. The world has changed. The NY Times and NBC are no longer influential, but this protester has a YouTube channel which generates statistics that CNN or NBC can only dream about. The balance of power has dramatically shifted.
unknowable2,
I always find your comments interesting. I find these particularly insightful!
Thank you. Years ago, I worked in aviation. I could see matters moving in a bad direction, and moved into IT. The last I knew, there was a lot of work in aviation, and a shortage of skilled people, but I have no interest in returning. It used to be that safety of flight was first and foremost, but these days, there is more safety-theater than actual safety. Finding good candidates for Air Traffic Controller jobs has become more difficult, too.
The recent runway collision in Japan was apparently caused by a Coast Guard plane which entered the runway without authorization, but when I heard the ATC recording, the controller’s English was so poor, and spoken so fast that I couldn’t decipher what he said. Four Coast Guard members killed, another injured, and an airliner destroyed by fire, fortunately with a successful evacuation and no serious injuries. It could have been much, much worse.
Over the last year or so, there have been quite a number of conflicts between aircraft on the ground, and some very close calls. The worst aviation accident in history, Tenerife, March 27 1977, was a conflict between an aircraft taxiing under instruction and a plane whose captain assumed they had clearance to take off, probably because of poor controller communications.
I’m sickened by the thought of another such disaster, but we’ve had a lot of close calls, and I’m afraid that there will be another bad one, if they don’t get things straightened out soon. So my Airman’s Certificates gather dust, and I haven’t been off the ground in years. I’m not afraid to fly; the odds are startlingly good that any one flight will be successful, but I don’t want to participate in the farce that aviation has become, in our day.