As stupid as you think the media is, it’s even worse. By Daniel Greenfield.
Broke-ness follows wokeness because it’s invariably the incompetent, lazy, corrupt and otherwise failed institutions that radicalize to avoid doing their jobs. From the federal government to corporate monopolies to financial gimmicks like FTX to the media to massive charities, institutional wokeness is a red flag that an organization is incompetent or a scam.
As a rule of thumb, the less innovative and functional an organization is, the more likely it is to disguise its innate worthlessness through virtue signaling. Executives go woke when they have no idea how to move a company forward. Employees who don’t want to do their jobs descend into identity politics and demand that the company reflect their values. Those values, apart from all the right racial and sexual politics, will eventually come down to not doing their jobs. …
Example:
One of the most astounding stories of media malfeasance is how the Associated Press ran a story claiming that Russian missiles struck Poland after a 10 minute Slack chat with a reporter who told colleagues, “I’m actually at a doctor’s appointment.” Nobody at the AP, including its Arab correspondent running the European desk, did any kind of follow-up or got confirmation.
When a scandal like this reveals the internal workings of the media, it’s almost laughable how little fact checking goes into stories and how thoroughly ignorant everyone involved really is.
But the only thing astounding about the story is how commonplace it is. The media now routinely operates this way after discarding the layers of fact checking and runs reports based solely on whether they fit a political narrative and whether there is some anonymous government source behind them. The Russian missile strike story met both criteria.
We are informed about the world by incompetent and ignorant people:
“They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s close adviser, once sneered. “Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” He told this to the New York Times. …
Now not even kept in check by competition:
The media’s research methodologies are roughly about those of a college freshman trying to finish a term paper due the next day after a night of heavy partying. Material is thrown together in 10 minutes or less based on some casual googling or Slack chats by people who only have the job that they do because of their parents, which professor they befriended in journalism school or because of their race or other incidental attributes that qualify them for nothing.
It wasn’t always this way.
Journalism could be politically extreme, but it was also a brash competitive sport. Now there’s no meaningful competition in any other arena other than political radicalism. …
Lying is easier, and it has become routine:
It’s not just that the media lies all the time in the service of its cause, but that its wretches no longer have the skill or even understanding to tell the lies apart from the truth.
And so they simplify matters in the timeless fashion of extremists by declaring everything they believe to be the truth and everything that they disagree with to be a lie. Or disinformation.
Faced with Hunter Biden’s laptop, they phone up a few experts from their contact list who tell them what they want to hear and the media proclaims it’s Russian disinformation. Faced with actual Russian disinformation accusing Trump of frolicking with prostitutes in Moscow, they cheerfully amplify it as loudly as they can. And they are too dumb to even know any better.
Like their old Pravda predecessors in Moscow, they don’t know anything except the party line. Woke generals can’t win wars, but can recite equity pledges. Woke CEOs lose money, but talk about their commitment to ESG. Woke journalists don’t know whether the story they’re about to work on is true or false and have no concept of any objective truth. Only the party’s truth.
The woke midwits have taken over the media. Mediocrity thrives and merit dies.
Possibly related: In the UK, the BBC has publicly stated its intention to dumb down its own television programming.
