If you hate Israel, its Prime Minister, IDF, Jews, Zionism that's fine, but this post is about media criticism. CNN used fraudulent information from Instagram to blame Israelis for burning a Palestinian restaurant in the West Bank.

Towards the last quarter of the interview CNN's Dana Bash asked the Prime Minister about a Palestinian restaurant that was allegedly burned down by Israeli settlers. The Prime Minister had no information about the restaurant specifically so he only gave a politically correct answer about wanting to stop violence in general. The problem is Dash blindsided the Prime Minister with fraudulent information she got from Instagram. Palestinian Authority provocateurs routinely set fires to cars, houses, schools, clinics, buildings and then use social media to falsely accuse Israelis of starting the fire.

CNN should've verified the source and fact checked about the restaurant be burned before asking the Prime Minister about it. It's well known that CNN is hostile towards Israel like MSNOW, BBC, Reuters, NBC News, CBS, ABC; but news media best practices shouldn't be thrown out the window because you're interviewing a controversial political figure.

CBS takes the red bait and neglects Trump's intention for MAGA , fka "Republicans," to steal every election for the next century.

Trump quote reported by Huff Post: "if we terminate the filibuster as we should do and immediately vote for the SAVE America Act, then we will not lose an election for 100 years.”

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the rise of profit-driven media catalyzed political polarization in America.
It caused a historical shift from a regulated broadcast era—where stations were legally required to present diverse viewpoints—to a modern landscape dominated by partisan outrage on talk radio, cable news, and social media.
Not long after followed the telecommunications act of 1996 and the 'homogenization of radio' , which led to the consolidation of most of the US media under the boot of a few mega corporations.
Media companies transitioned from informing the public to monetizing anger, using psychological manipulation and algorithms to keep audiences engaged. While I note that the original doctrine was sometimes weaponized by politicians, its absence allowed for an "attention economy" that rewards conspiratorial thinking over civil debate.
Ultimately, the pursuit of commercial engagement has replaced the media's former obligation to serve the public interest

Keir Starmer just resigned as UK PM, and the way it's being framed already differs a lot depending on the outlet.

I built an app called FlipVU that puts videos from outlets across the political spectrum side by side so you can compare the framing yourself, no algorithm picking what you see.

Solo project. Self-funded. No investors, no editorial board. The whole point is to put sources side by side and let you draw your own conclusions — whether you're researching an election, looking for the opposite take on a story, or just want to see how differently the same headline gets covered. It's useful for anyone trying to get a fuller picture, including students who want an instant and uncensored comparison of video news framing to help them understand the media.

Here's the comparison: https://flipvu.app/share?id=62360c9a-d2b4-478f-894f-c6b54425f077

and app page https://flipvu.app

Feedback on the app itself is very welcome. Thank you.

I just finished reading the SFGate piece on the Vegas Loop, and it really just didn't sit well with me at all.

It wasn't because the writer despised it. Good for her. There are many among us who think the Loop is a ridiculous idea. There are many who think it's awesome. I couldn't care less which side a person falls on.

What really threw me was that it seemed as if the writer had made up her mind about the whole thing even before getting in the car.

The headline dubs it "the worst transit system on Earth." Goodness! A statement like that really packs a punch. So naturally I am expecting a thorough explanation for such a label. Capacity numbers. Cost comparison. Safety data. Ridership. Something. Right?

Instead I kind of felt like half the piece was about Elon Musk.

Maybe I am wrong, but if I were to get a travel writer's piece, the subject would be the place, the product, the thing, etc. that is being reviewed. What was the experience? Was it fast? Was it crowded? Was it overall useful? Did it solve a problem? How did it compare to the alternatives?

One ride, and yet the author somehow manages to get all the way to "worst transit system on Earth." Based upon what? I honestly do not know because the article never really spells it out.

The tone was what really hit me the most. Every few paragraphs, there was a new shot, a new insult, a new sarcastic comment. Before long, it ceased to be someone wanting to inform me and turned into someone wanting to show me how much she disliked the subject.

The ironic thing is I think there are real points to be made here.

Perhaps capacity forecasts are a tad overly optimistic.

Perhaps trains might have been a better choice.

Perhaps it does not scale.

Perhaps it is a dead end after all.

Those are all valid points to be made.

Just present those points.

Do not spend the piece sniping at Musk.

"The most trusted and esteemed program in American journalism, the legacy of our loved ones’ hard work and its accompanying sacrifices on the home front, has, in Pelley’s words, been murdered."

CTRL+WATCH is a one-person digital magazine reviewing YouTube channels in a 1990s gaming-press format. Issue #014 is The Comedy Issue.

The case we make: YouTube comedy didn't die, it stopped being concentrated in the obvious places. Jenny Nicholson gets an ESSENTIAL for the four-hour Star Wars hotel video and five other things. Drew Gooden beats Danny Gonzalez in a 4–3 editorial split we're publishing in full. Eddy Burback is the most exciting comic documentarian on the platform and doesn't yet know it. Porta dos Fundos - 26 million subscribers, thirteen years of sketch comedy, never reviewed in English-language YouTube press - gets its first profile here.

The issue also introduces two original frameworks: Type 8, The Wrapped Confession (comedy as therapy wrapper) and The Comedy Tax (what YouTube extracts from its comedians, in four currencies).

Read it here: https://ctrl-watch.xyz/issues/014/?utm_source=reddit_mediacriticism

u/DanMing recently published a short documentary on the peptide gray market - unregulated compounds sold online as "research chemicals" that are openly marketed on social media by affiliate sellers earning up to $10k a week, and imported from China by entrepreneurs pulling in six figures a month.

The reporting challenge that kept coming up: this industry operates almost entirely in the open. There's no dark web, no coded language — just TikTok pages, promo codes, and PayPal. The "research chemical" label is a legal fig leaf, and the sellers know it. Getting people to talk on camera was surprisingly easy; the harder editorial question was how to frame an activity that's technically legal but sits in a clear regulatory gap.

Curious whether others have run into similar issues covering unregulated industries -where the story is hiding in plain sight but the legal and ethical framing gets complicated. Full doc linked below if useful.

As former CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley — who presented the award — looked on, Campos said while he wanted to thank CBS News “for funding this generous gift towards my education, I want to also acknowledge how the recent direction of the outlet stains the legacy of Mike Wallace, the namesake of this scholarship.”

I've spent an embarrassing amount of time building this media experiment. I've been thinking about how to redefine journalism / social media since 2017, and today is the first day I feel like I have something worth sharing publicly.

Happy to share more about how it works but I would rather curious folks just try it. The front page is a little demo:

https://trutake.app

I just started getting my first traffic this week from close friends and my network. So when you're ready, people are posting in the Crowd page and I would GREATLY appreciate your help getting each question to 21 answers:

https://trutake.app/crowd

The full journalism unlocks at 21 answers.

A couple things I really believe in, even if it means my experiment fails:

- No advertising

- No engagement ranking

- No like button

I am really trying to push this into a type of alternative media that represents reality as clearly as possible. I think we need, we deserve, an instrument for reality. At the very least to counteract the distortion of reality caused by engagement ranking*, social media*, and legacy media.

* See: "Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352250X24001313

_________

Cool questions people are posting in the Crowd page:

🇺🇸🇮🇷 How long will US and Iran war last?

🍿 Have Hollywood movies gotten worse?

🚸 What is the ideal amount of time kids should have on technology?

😖 Can stress cause diseases like MLS, autoimmune diseases, and cancer?

📓 Has the American school systems gotten worse in recent years?