The other day I saw a video on Twitter of parasites controlling a dead insect and making it walk around as if it were alive.
I suddenly realised, to paraphrase an old Newman and Baddiel sketch: that’s our media, that is.
The legacy media now exists almost solely as a propped up corpse whose only function is to facilitate the formerly neoliberal, now woke elite. Rather than expose truth, its main purpose seems to be to suppress dissent, as became blindingly apparent during the Covid era.
But are we about to hit a tipping point where things like Twitter, and whatever similar platforms may emerge, will be considered the ‘real’ media?
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas believes we’re already there. Someone on a Twitter space told him it was a shame their recent video exposé of Pfizer employee Jordan Walker hadn’t garnered much coverage in the mainstream media, to which O’Keefe countered that it had received over 20 million views on Twitter already. A quick check shows it is up to 38.6 million at the time of writing.
He challenged his interlocutor on what really constitutes the mainstream media now. Yes, the story was swiftly taken down by MailOnline and has been largely ignored by American legacy media platforms. But it’s already reaching a far greater audience on Twitter.
It reminds me of the attempt to shut down Joe Rogan over his platforming of dissenting voices on Covid, such as Dr. Robert Malone. An attempt that comprehensively failed, leading to amusing memes like the one above, based on the movie Captain Philips.
Rogan had an estimated 11 million listeners per episode last year. It is probably higher now. In fact, it was probably higher even then.
Brian Stelter, who used his platform on CNN to attack Rogan, ended up being the one who had his show cancelled, and was last seen at the World Econonic Forum’s annual jamboree in Davos, hosting a panel entitled – wait for it – ‘The Clear and Present Danger of Disinformation’. You will be beyond parody, and you will be happy.
Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and various other disappointing boomer icons also failed to stop Rogan, and his podcast juggernaut rolls on.
Of course, our media and political elite will continue to desperately hold onto power, with their sad meetings and threats to censor Elon Musk. But a large and ever-increasing number of people see through their nonsense, and now choose to get their information from sources like Twitter, Rogan and other podcasts, and even the humble Daily Sceptic. (On track to set a new site record, with >2.5 million page views this month).
So how long can the cadaver of the so-called ‘mainstream’ media stagger around before everyone realises the wretched creature is already dead?
The tipping point is coming.
Nick Dixon is Deputy Editor of the Daily Sceptic. You can follow him on Twitter and Substack.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Excellent article!
Fully agree. I cancelled my TV License months ago. I don’t miss watching tele at all. MSM is akin to the parrot in Monty Pythons parrot sketch. It cannot be too long before many others realise that the BBC et Al are purely propaganda machines. If you therefore are looking for the truth, then you need to search elsewhere.
I cancelled my TV license over a decade ago, have been saying the NSH is useless for 2 decades and that the police are dishonest, untrustworthy, power hungry a-holes for 3.
Now that the rest of the world is catching me up, I need to figure out what I can see, that has yet to pass, and work out how to monetise it!
When the MSM failed to ask the obvious questions about the supposed WMDs in Iraq, I thought it was just one major screw up, and that if they were led up down the garden path by the establishment, they would make sure it never happened again.
Then when in 2020 they failed to report that the new coronavirus wasn’t as bad as initially thought and instead deliberately exaggerated the danger I knew instantly that they were completely corrupted and not in anyway trustworthy.
Since then I haven’t visited a major media site even when I get links simply on principle.
They are scum.
Their one eyed support of the climate hysteria marked them down as scrotes long before their covid wet dreams
Worth reading only for sports reporting.
We are winning the reality and truth wars. That said I know of many people – most of them digitally illiterate – who still watch, believe, read and pray to the Fake News and Fake $cience….many of them are old, all are rather stupid imo. I have never watched the lamestream news or TV. And that for me, was a definite ‘boundary’ between Rona realists and anti-LDers and anti-Fascists and the sheeple.
Keep swinging, keep fighting. Truth does come out.
I slightly disagree with your comment ‘many of them are old, all are rather stupid imo’. I know plenty of people from all walks of life, many if not most of whom I would consider bright, intelligent, computer-savvy and otherwise on the ball, who will start conversations with ‘I heard/watched on the BBC…’ or ‘I read in the Daily Tel/Times/Mail/Express, etc…’. Are they just lazy, overly policitised or so utterly indoctrinated that the idea there might be another point of view is not even considered? Their startled, rabbit-in-headlight responses to my rather terse (!) comments re MSM propaganda are actually pretty terrifying; I fear we still have a long way to go to win this thing.
I’m not sure it is about age or digital literacy, I am 70 and cut my teeth on PCs 20 years before the laptop generation was born and I am not unique since my contemporaries also became computer literate too – had to to do their jobs as businesses computerised.
Humans are complex, so I expect there are a number of reasons why some swallow the pap spoon-fed them by the MSM, and some don’t.
I think the difference is that people on places like Twitter tend to follow people they agree with. I guess the MSM equivalent would be buying a newspaper whose editorial line you broadly agree with, or watching Fox instead of CNN, but I would argue that the politically asleep probably ascribe a greater degree of legitimacy to the TV news than to social media feeds, especially the older generations.
The sad thing is it should be boringly normal to ascribe a greater degree of legitimacy to ‘trusted’ news sources – they should have basic standards and integrity even if operating under a degree of political bias and proprietorial influence. There’s a grain of truth in most propaganda, and the online world is groaning under the weight of clickbait and poorly researched garbage, despite being the only place you can go to find out about a lot of major events.
Part of the problem seems to be that the MSM has been thoroughly bought from top to bottom, and now depends more on sponsorship by special interest groups laundering the influence of governments and billionaire ‘philanthropists’ through phoney PR outfits and pressure groups than selling their product to the public. Most newspapers now seem to be vehicles for copy generated by these outside bodies, which is often strikingly different in tone than their more humdrum and shrinking original news content.
In the case of the parts of the media which have always relied on corporate sponsorship, their corporate paymasters seem to care more about shaping the public into good little sheep than selling their product. Like political parties, ‘going broke’ no longer seems much of a concern. This is probably the weirdest development of recent times. The elusive answer as to “why?” seems the most likely to lie in the shady world of conspiracy theories that might well turn out to be true.
Yes indeed, all very odd
Another nail in the Blessed BBC’s Coffin is that younger people tend to get their information from sources other than the MSM.
The days of getting the “truth” from simply watching the 6, 9, 10o’clock news or whatever are gradually disappearing.
And once your eyes have been opened, even a little, that prompts critical thought.
Maybe there’s hope yet.
Oh, for the days of Richard Baker, Moira Stuart, Kenneth Kendall and Robin Day. We all knew what the truth was in those day, because there was only one truth. We might not have seen it all, and we could argue about what it meant, but it wasn’t the fragmented ‘my truth’ of today.
Great article. Nailed it. I now have an atom more hope on this grey bleak Sunday morning.
Very up cheering
“… the humble Daily Sceptic. (On track to set a new site record, with >2.5 million page views this month).”
Great news. Let’s keep it up.
‘We are the media.”
“A quick check shows it is up to 38.6 million at the time of writing.”
41.1 million at 1130 this morning.
The Globalists and the pathetic MSM have completely lost control of the narrative.
Critical mass has to build up before anything becomes viable, and that accrues slowly until reached, then becomes a deluge and unstoppable.
The Internet has made it possible, which is why Governments and their acolytes are desperate to control its content.
Only sort of true, in the USA CNN has had famously negligible viewers for years now but in the UK mainstream TV and BBC radio still have a vast following, likewise with the local affiliate TV stations in the USA. I know people who follow the WEF’s Facebook page because of the soothing superficially left-wing memes it puts out.
Really? That’s truly depressing.
As more people start using the Daily Sceptic to get actual news, more people will also be reading the comments. We need people onboard, so infighting and attacks on article authors will not help our cause. Worth bearing in mind. The comments can be just as influential as the article, so can I suggest we try to communicate as we would in person – always with some basic common courtesy. There’s many brilliant contributors on here, but also a few… not so much.
“can I suggest we try to communicate as we would in person – always with some basic common courtesy.”
Try taking your own advice.
? No idea where that has come from! I’ve generally always found you to be polite and, although I don’t agree with you on everything, never had an ugly exchange. A misunderstanding once, but dealt with politely. Anyway, ironically, this is exactly the thing we don’t want – infighting.
I stuck with the DM for a while even as they went a bit soft on Brexit, I had a mail+ subscription which I cancelled when they backed May’s surrender agreement and blasted the spartans. It’s gone downhill from there and their coverage of covid was just as bad as anyone else’s.
The analogy is perfect!
I received an email from Twitter HQ on Friday, telling me my old Twitter account (deleted in August 2021 for “Covid misinformation”) had been reinstated. I logged in and saw my follower count was still at 32k followers. I realised I’d missed nothing after all this time, and deactivated the account.
Twitter brought a lot of us freedom fighters together but it also brought a lot of abuse, anxiety and negative attention. Time to move on from Twitter?
Yes I agree..I think even Elon Musk has said something to the effect of Twitter supporting Citizen Journalism….it seems the way that it’s going…
When the MSM wanted us to believe that we unvaccinated were a tiny minority, I would look at different sites….LS, Joe Rogan, Russell Brand and many others and realise the MSM must be talking tripe….as the alternatives all had audiences of millions….and we were all in agreement about so much….
It was Del Bigtree from the Highwire, through the lawyer Aaron Siri, who forced Pfizer to release all of its papers…something that would never have happened if we were waiting for MSM….
It was ‘rebel’ doctors, scientists and others on media platforms that were able to disseminate all of the COVID information and data….it was Twitter that released the Twitter files…..
The UK media has lost a huge amount of trust and is nothing but a megaphone for Big Government, BigPharma, and Big Business…I think most of the Western media is the same….
I can’t see me going back to MSM …. Ever….
I so enjoyed this article. Delicious!
Awake with JP videos get me views than the highest rate show on CNN.
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
Years ago, Kate Adie gave a talk at a literary festival, which included the state of modern journalism. In the Q&A, my Dad, who along with my Mum is a retired former journalist, asked her if she thought the then-burgeoning internet scene would create an underground press. Kate Adie dodged the question. My Dad, now 86 and in poor health, has been delighted to see the emergence of the alternative press and angered to see publications he worked for as a young man turn into supine state propaganda instruments.
Some people say that the alternative media, as with much of the alternative economy, only attracts people with similar viewpoints, but you could argue that The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Mirror, The Grauniad and others would mostly attract people who have their views, even as people with different views might contribute.
On the average morning, I can look at The Daily Sceptic, which I give money to, The Daily Wire, which I currently subscribe to, for the US conservative view, Breitbart, Unherd, Quillette, Spiked! and many other online publications. I can read articles on a number of those sites by people whom I originally encountered in the mainstream press, yet here they are writing longer, more complex articles than they would in the old newspapers. Many are not right of centre. Often as not though, they are not postmodernists and the real enemy in our society is postmodernism, rather than old concepts of left and right.
I can go to YouTube and Rumble and watch Ron Paul, The Ayn Rand Institute, The Atlas Society, John Anderson’s interviews, TRIGGERnometry, countless lifestyle channels, countless geeky media commentary channels.
People still default to the MSM, in part in the UK because of the psychological stranglehold the BBC has over the population. I still talk to people who believe British TV is the best in the world and no other country makes good TV. I think it’s a generational thing. I chose to stop watching the BBC in 2000. After a couple of weeks of compulsively wanting to turn on the TV out of habit, I stopped. My reading widened considerably and I realised how much mind control propaganda I’d been fed. At 48, I don’t see myself ever returning to broadcast TV. I can’t see myself picking up a daily newspaper the way my folks do. My grandfather was a major international sports journalist for the Telegraph for decades. I cut my ties with that paper with great sadness when Philip Johnston’s article condemning unvaccinated people became the straw breaking the camel’s back. By then, Bob Moran had been sacked, Julie Burchill kicked out, and the Gates-funded Nuki had been allowed to run riot with politicised fear porn.
The internet is a strange thing. It’s a revolution that’s killed our old society, it’s being used by people from that dying society to try to create a terrifying new global surveillance state, yet it’s also the birthplace of an alternative economy, an alternative media and perhaps another, better freer society beyond the control of the new oligarchs. So Frank Herbert was right: revolutions do sow the seeds of their own destruction.
And often in the alternative media you find ‘below the line’ comments that are as pertinent and resonant as the headline article – like this one.
The MSM is the last industry that is going to hold an honest inquiry into its own behaviour, and is unfortunately the one in the best position to hide the truth about its own decay. Alongside the slide into cronyism by the political class, it is where introspection is now most needed though. We particularly need to be able to understand the phenomenon of journalists moonlighting as ‘hacks for hire’ for various PR shell companies, and the conflicts of interest inherent in this. They end up effectively paid by outside influences to be their own sources of slanted propaganda.
It is unclear whether proprietors allow this to happen because they’ve been corrupted by the same influences (and we’re living in an age with an economic divide so vast that billions are now sloshing around to be easily used for this purpose), or whether they allow it to happen because it’s a convenient way to avoid restlessness due to poor pay and working conditions. The selective muting of huge stories that might challenge the ‘narrative’ points to a rot in the editorial rungs and above, but perhaps both factors are in play?