Corporate Controlled Media
In the eyes of D.C. media elites, jokes about murderous drone strikes and a war that killed over a million Iraqis fall well within the boundaries of civility, but humor that targets the powerful is completely unacceptable. That was the message many journalists and critics took from the White House Correspondents’ Association’s (WHCA) “pathetic” statement Sunday night apologizing for the performance of comedian Michelle Wolf, who pilloried the incompetence of Democrats, railed against the lies of the Trump administration, and spoke uncomfortable truths about the corporate media’s complicity in the president’s ascent to power.
As media critic Simon Maloy lamented, the behavior of much of the corporate media “indicates how alarmingly comfortable much of the mainstream press is with the idea that the president can just up and decide to initiate military hostilities whenever, wherever, and for whatever reason—even when there is no actual reason at all.”
“The spreaders of fake news are using increasingly sophisticated methods. If we don’t have enough quantifiable information about the problem, we’ll never be able to design interventions that work. This paper is really a call to groups across the globe — academics, journalists and private industry — to work together to attack this problem.”