On The Media

Tim has been on a roll recently. Not that Tim, the other Tim. Tim Pool. When YouTube and Twitter started purging ‘conservative’ Japanese content that wasn’t breaking any content rules, following what YouTube and Twitter were already doing in America, Tim Pool was the only online journalist reporting it.

I don’t always agree with Tim’s politics or watch every video post, but I always keep an eye on him. His reports on the devolution of mainstream media and how social media like YouTube and Twitter contribute to that decline, is on the nose. Another thing I like about Tim is that he believes in positive engagement and calling things as he finds it. This sets him apart from former Vice News colleagues: Tim has not lost the ability to think critically and objectively, he questions everything and tries to examine both sides of an issue. To me this is healthy.

And Tim knows when to play the YouTube de-ranking guessing game because he knows there are more important things to report on than waste time fighting YouTube. His milk toast reports are considered so dangerous by YouTube that real YouTube humans review his every video and suppress ones they don’t like:

One disturbing trend that social media drives is what I call cut and paste narrative journalism. Part of it is driven by the need for clicks and what big media thinks will sell. I see this frequently in mainstream western reporting on Japan that likes to portray Japan in a negative light. Here’s a recent piece written by Ian Bremmer for Time titled, Why the Japan-South Korea Trade War Is Worrying for the World, where you can see cut and paste narrative journalism in action.

The opening sentence is a setup: “but it’s the trade spat between Japan and South Korea that signals the larger troubles ahead for the world.” This is Bremmer’s opinion, nothing else, and puts him squarely in the South Korea supporters club. There are plenty of economic experts who will tell you that Japanese ~ South Korean trade volume isn’t nearly as important as the media makes it out to be.

Skipping the next few sentences of regurgitated South Korean side only history, we arrive at the crucial sentence:

“Frustrated with the proceedings and determined to put pressure on Moon’s government to intervene in some way, Japan strengthened restrictions on several high-tech exports to South Korea in July and downgraded South Korea’s status as a trusted trading partner in August.”

This is classic cut and paste narrative. It substitutes fact for opinion, while presenting it as fact. Bremmer removes all the context of Japanese claims that South Korean was violating UN sanctions on North Korean, among many other things, leading up to the sanctions. Instead of crucial context we get: Japan is frustrated. Really? Can you prove that Ian?

The rest of the piece deflates from there into a half-hearted denouncement of President Trumps foreign policy, without naming Trump, as if Bremmer can’t decide whether it’s a good or bad thing for the U.S. to play the world’s policeman.

I find it hard to stay well informed with big media these days. Big media is still important but sifting the good from the bad is a lot more work. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to get easier.