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https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-bombhole-era-0cb

The Bombhole Era 

An excerpt from the new edition of “Hate Inc.” 

The new paperback edition of Hate Inc. has gone to print (for details about where to find the book, click here). The excerpt below is from the new chapter in the book, looking back at the Trump years. Thanks to Leighton Woodhouse for his great work on the animated video above. From the new foreword:

A UTOPIA OF DIVISION
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/4598095214928566760/8814868857073362073
News in the Trump years became a narrative drama, with each day advancing a tale of worsening political emergency, driven by subplots involving familiar casts of characters, in the manner of episodic television. It worked, but news directors and editors hit a stumbling block. If you cover everything like there’s no tomorrow, what happens when there is, in fact, a tomorrow?

The innovation was to use banner headlines to saturate news cycles, often to the exclusion of nearly any other news, before moving to the next controversy so quickly that mistakes, errors, or rhetorical letdowns were memory-holed.

The American Napoleon generated controversies at such a fantastic rate that stations like CNN and MSNBC (and Fox too) were able to keep ratings high by moving from mania to mania, hyping stories on the way up but not always following them down. The moment the narrative premise of any bombshell started to fray, the next story in line was bumped to the front.

News outlets paid off old editorial promises with new headlines: Ponzi journalism.

This technique of using the next bombshell story to push the last one down a memory-hole — call it Bombholing — needed a polarized audience to work. As surveys by organizations like the Pew Center showed, the different target demographics in Trump’s America increasingly did not communicate with one another. Democrats by 2020 were 91 percent of the New York Times audience and 95 percent of MSNBC’s, while Republicans were 93 percent of Fox viewers. When outlets overreached factually, it was possible, if not likely, that the original target audience would never learn the difference.

This reduced the incentive to be careful. Audiences devoured bombshells even when aware on a subconscious level that they might not hold up to scrutiny. If a story turned out to be incorrect, that was okay. News was now more about underlying narratives audiences felt were true and important. For conservatives, Trump was saving America from a conspiracy of elites. For “liberal” audiences, Trump was trying to assume dictatorial power, and the defenders of democracy were trying to stop him.

A symbiosis developed. Where audiences once punished media companies for mistakes, now they rewarded them for serving up the pure heroin of shaky, first-draft-like blockbusters. They wanted to be in the trenches of information discovery. Audiences were choosing powerful highs over lasting ones.

Moreover, if after publication another shoe dropped in the form of mitigating information, audiences were disinterested, even angry. Those updates were betrayals of the entertainment contract, like continuity errors. Companies soon learned there was a downside to once-mandatory ethical practices. Silent edits at newspapers became common, and old standards like the italicized editor’s note at the bottom of the page letting you know this or that story had been “updated” began to disappear.

The political impact of all this was that the news watcher in the Trump years became more addicted to the experience of being outraged, while retaining less about specific reasons for outrage. Audiences remembered some big stories and big themes, but stopped digesting each story on its own, rarely bothering to look back at the meaning of various manias after they’d died down.

As George Orwell understood when he created the “memory hole” concept in 1984, an institution that can obliterate memory can control history. In the Trump era, news audiences volunteered to stop the disobedient act of remembering.

They brought a pure, virginal belief to watching news, and agreed to unquestioningly accept any new versions of the past put forward. This was Hate Inc. brought to its logical conclusion. Fox and MSNBC already knew how to monetize anger by setting audiences against one another. The innovation of the Trump era was companies learned they could operate on a sort of editorial margin, borrowing credibility for unproven stories from audiences themselves, who gave permission to play loose with facts by gobbling up anonymously-sourced exposes that tickled their outrage centers.

Mistakes became irrelevant. In a way, they were no longer understood as mistakes.

Video link - Bombholed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIAWggqZQmE&feature=emb_imp_woyt

....

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56330.htm

Blame for EU-Russia Impasse

There’s nothing like a good dose of truth to get some people’s hackles up. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the European Union it was “an unreliable partner” and then the floodgates of fury opened.

Lavrov was speaking to the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell while he was on an official visit to Moscow. It was a fair comment by the Russian top diplomat considering the facts of Europe’s servile deference to Washington’s anti-Russia policies, as well as the EU’s arrogant assumption to interfere in Russia’s sovereign affairs.

But the furious reaction to Lavrov’s remark alleged that Russia was “humiliating” the EU. The bloc is threatening to impose more sanctions on Moscow, to which the Kremlin has said it is ready to sever relations with the EU if it goes ahead with moves to damage the Russian economy.

Lamentably, Russia and the EU should be natural partners. After all, Russia is the largest country on the continent of Europe and there is huge trade flows between them, especially in the critical energy sector of Russian oil and gas.

However, since the EU enlarged its membership over many preceding years to the current number of 27 states, it can be adjudged to have acquired a more complicated, incoherent and feckless policy towards Russia. A major factor has been the membership of Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Those states joined the EU in 2004 along with six others in what was the biggest expansion episode for the bloc.

Poland and the Baltic states are characterized by politics of intense animosity towards Russia, or what may be called Russophobia. The history of the Soviet Union, their collaboration with Nazi Germany, and the Red Army’s liberation of quisling states all contribute to a dominant reactionary politics in Poland and the Baltic countries. One which is marked by resentment and contempt for Russia.

It is notable that when Josep Borrell returned from his recent trip to Moscow it was mainly politicians from the above states who led the calls for his resignation and the imposition of more sanctions on Russia.

It is these countries which have pushed a whole host of anti-Russia viewpoints, including claims that Moscow has nefarious plans for aggression and posing as an imminent security threat. Washington has taken full advantage of this Russophobia to increase its influence over Europe. Poland and the Baltic states are big proponents of NATO force build-up along Russia’s borders. They also are vehemently opposed to further development of Russian gas supplies through the Nord Stream 2 project while touting for American alternative Liquefied Natural Gas, even though the latter would be much more expensive for consumers, industry and businesses.

The irrational antagonism towards Russia is such that politicians from Poland and the Baltic states are even opposed to the EU registering the use of the Sputnik V vaccine despite its proven efficacy and the outstanding supply problems for vaccinating the EU population. This obdurate mindset is tantamount to cutting your nose off to spite your face.

Mick Wallace, an Irish independent Member of the European Parliament, says the Polish and Baltic politicians are “obsessed” with spouting negative views about Russia. He says though that their influence on European policy is “zero” since France and Germany are the main drivers of policy. Nevertheless, they are an irritant in relations with Russia.

Historically, Wallace says the EU admitted those Eastern European states to its ranks for two reasons: to boost European corporate profits by accessing a pool of cheap labour; and, two, to facilitate the expansion of NATO and the all-important military-industrial complex.

But a “price” for these purported gains was the detriment it would produce for European-Russian relations.

This is reflected in European hypocrisy and duplicity. On the one hand, the EU needs Russia for fueling its societies and economies. On the other hand, anti-Russian bigotry and prejudices are given vent from reactionary, rightwing member states.

Moscow is right to tell the duplicitous Europeans they are unreliable.

Because they are. Reliably unreliable. It is not Russia which is seeking to sever relations. It is the European Union which has constantly undermined and thwarted relations. It takes two to tango.

And understandably Russia has got fed up with being constantly tripped by EU duplicity.