Are we in the final stages of mainstream media dominance? Over the last 15 years the market has certainly shifted – the mainstream’s sluggish adoption of nascent technology and that technology’s ever expanding reach has opened the door to new media.
It takes a long time for a whale washed up on a beach to decay to just bones. Scavengers pick over the rotting carcass for years before it finally disappears. One could argue that since 2020 the decay of mainstream media has quickened in pace. The mainstream media’s bias and lack of integrity is unravelling. Whether it was the failure of the mainstream to interrogate the Covid narrative, the one-sided and often mistaken coverage of the BLM protests after the murder of George Floyd or the lack of interest and then cover up of a certain laptop, perception of impartiality is difficult to justify.
What has stopped mainstream media asking the most pertinent and relevant questions? Recent events highlight either a lack of journalistic integrity or, more concerning, ideological capture. The New York Times is no longer the paper of record, seemingly reporting Hamas press releases verbatim. The once great BBC seems to be more interested in teaching about white privilege, while the Associated Press is now the communications arm of the climate change lobby.
Dissenting opinions, alternative and independent views and traditional values are being deconstructed to an alarming degree. This has left many people feeling unseen and de-prioritised in the cultural conversation.
Reading, viewing and listening figures are all down across the mainstream. The public is departing the mainstream in droves. But the question is, where are they going?
Figures show they are going to new media. Joe Rogan is now arguably the world’s most powerful journalist; his popularity is largely due to him offering long form content where viewers and listeners get a better understanding of the issues than they would from clickbait headlines or snippets. Matt Taibbi, an American author, journalist, podcaster and former Contributing Editor for Rolling Stone, broke the Twitter files on his Substack, and Dr. Carl Heneghan and Dr. Tom Jefferson, two medical researchers whose Covid advice was different from the Government’s, can review and respond to the U.K.’s Covid Inquiry on Substack.
Funding
Traditionally the mainstream was funded by advertisers. Brands would place ads for their products and services in the pages of publications and pay for the privilege. Potential customers would see the ads and buy the products or services. With the digitalisation of the news this moved to website ads and then led to the centralisation of ad inventory. This all worked out quite nicely for everyone. But then…
Independent news media represent a double threat to the established mainstream. Firstly, the mainstream is haemorrhaging readers, viewers and listeners to them; advertisers pay per impression in the digital world, thus less impressions mean less advertising revenue. Secondly and more dangerously, alt-media sites are subverting the mainstream media’s control of the narrative.
Wiser men have written about the censorship industrial complex, a phrase coined by Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger; it is a growing, international, multi-billion dollar sector. The establishment has a number of tactics to censor and thwart independent publishers. Some are easy to spot, while others are more covert. YouTubers and podcasters can simply be taken off the platforms: Jordan Peterson has had a number of episodes taken off YouTube and Dr. Robert W. Malone has been banned completely. It is a little more difficult to impede independent news publishers. One way is for the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) and other NGOs like NewsGuard and Graphika to deem alt-news websites to be ‘unsafe’ because they publish ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ – often relying on ‘fact-checkers’ funded by these websites’ mainstream rivals – thus removing their ability to sell advertising space. Media Matters monitors media outlets for “conservative misinformation” then notifies activist journalists so they can take “direct action against offending media institutions”. They sometimes do this in nefarious ways – as revealed in the recent Musk lawsuit.
The big social media platforms offer a new way to connect with users. But with the exception of X, they do not tolerate free speech. Calling a man dressed up as a woman a man will get you banned on Facebook and Instagram quicker than you can say “XY”. YouTube has what it is calling a ‘hate speech’ policy that is applied so arbitrarily that it is near impossible to guess what content it will tolerate and what will be removed because it’s ‘hate speech’.
Twitter 1.0 said it was not shadow-banning but the Twitter Files revealed that was clearly a lie. Twitter 2.0 is better than Twitter 1.0, but it still shadow-bans some content under a policy described as “freedom of speech, not reach” and we know Google tweaks its algorithms to promote content it approves of and suppress content it doesn’t.
The mainstream media and their backers are doing all they can to suppress and demonetise independent media creators.
Independent media funding
Yet against all odds, independent media channels are thriving, attracting millions of page views, viewers and listeners.
Without access to advertisers and with the sword of Damocles hanging over them, independent content creators are forced to rely on donations from supporters and fans or premium content subscription models.
Independent media are what they say, independent, and so trying to get them all in one place is a bit like herding cats. However, there is now a way to seamlessly advertise across all independent publishers. Through my agency’s new advertising platform, you can simultaneously reach the readers of the Daily Sceptic or Spiked, access viewers of Triggernometry or Real America’s Voice, or sponsor the Zero Hedge Debates.
Uncommon Ad Space, a new advertising platform my agency has created, represents a unique opportunity to promote your brand to a largely untapped audience of millions of fiercely loyal, independent thinkers and heavy purchasers. The mission is to bring independent media outlets together in one place so brands and advertisers who want to reach this market can do so easily. Not only can brands get access to a rapidly growing audience, but they can also help support independent content creators and circumvent efforts by the censorship-industrial complex to demonetise them.
As the utopian globalist ideologues abandon everything of value, beauty, truth, justice and genuine merit, they create huge opportunities for independent websites and content creators. New media are the future. Old media sites are rapidly piling up in the dustbin of history.
Lee Taylor is the Managing Director of marketing agency Uncommon Sense. You can contact him on email here. Find Uncommon Ad Space on X. The Uncommon Ad Space website can be found here.
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Why weren’t mummy and daddy forced to repay the £10,000 damage to the picture frame?
Because the miscreants are adults, at least in terms of age.
I don’t like exemplary sentences.
Two years for wrecking a frame that cost $10,000 and can be easily replaced seems excessive. Replacing the value, a fine and community service would do.
(And for the avoidance of doubt I think JSO activists are as idiotic as their cause.)
It’s a strange world really though. I come back to the horrible things that people in authority do to others on a regular basis, sometimes quite knowingly. Like the invasion of Iraq or the untold damage done during the covid madness.
We definitely live in a multi tiered justice system. The more senior a position of authority you have, the more damage and destruction you can get away with.
You would definitely put and stop to the endless expansion of the state if people in authority would be made to pay for the consequences of their actions.
I am sure there are many like me who applaud the sentences.
The actual value of the damaged propery should be irrelevant. The tariffs for sentencing (the guidlines for judges) to not have a monetary value attached.
Agreed, and I agree with the below comment. It’s not like they’ll even serve all of that time anyway. Meanwhile, my bigger concern is that the UK ( and elsewhere, seemingly ) has a society that is trying to normalize paedophilia. Look at the non-sentences doled out for those caught with child sex abuse images as a comparison. These people get to go about their lives, rub shoulders with decent people, nobody’s checking if they’re keeping a distance from children ( Christ, some of them have children! ) and try their level best not to get caught next time, because this isn’t something that you can just shut off in your brain;
”Two years for the very personification of entitled moronism.
For the first time in her life there are consequences to her actions. It’s… what’s the word I’m looking for? I know: DELICIOUS.
It’s tough way to grow up – but you’ve earned every single second. Your parents should be slopping out with you.”
https://x.com/KiszelyPhilip/status/1839673198142455981
But this Pheobe person is doing this stuff all of the time. When does it become necessary to stop these people? After one incident like this or after 20 incidents. The justice system has actually been very lenient with these people.
Why can’t we just leave these people glued to the wall? Let’s see how they would feel after a few days.
Exactly. Certainly my preferred way of dealing with these Next Tuesdays.
Or glue them together… because if you can’t beat them, join them!
But seriously though that is not a bad idea. They are suggesting that it is our collective responsibility to save the planet by eradicating fossil fuels and and plunging ourselves into the dark ages. So whose responsibility is it to unglue them from the wall? Let the museum close and they can spend the night. If our oil usage has consequences, then so do your tomato soup and glue fetishes.
Maybe after a few days somebody could bring them some soup!
Their cause to many sounds noble and getting rid of fossil fuels sounds plausible. But actually it is not noble to deny the third world fossil fuels that would alleviate their misery and it is not plausible to be rid of fossil fuels since they supply 85% of the worlds energy. ——–So their cause is one based entirely on faith and emotion rather than fact and reason. I blame government and a compliant media for having brainwashed these easily manipulated people into thinking there is a climate apocalypse just around the corner, when infact there is no evidence that CO2 from fossil fuels use is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate.
imagine the smell.
Hmm. Could enter them into the Turner Prize?
Or maybe Lego could bring out new enviro sets from various scenes from all this. A couple of Lego characters with hands stuck to a road blocking a Lego Ambulance? Oh! wait…
https://toybook.com/lego-sustainability-news/
Such as this
With people crawling all over the tanker and fiddling with it, where’s the explosion?
Let us remember, back in 2008, when Hedge Fund Billionaire Jeremy Grantham set up the Grantham Research Unit Climate Fraud outfit, including Mega Liar Bob Ward, PhD (failed).
Ward became famed as “fast fingers Ward” and was the go-to guy for all the MSM in their Reality-Denier scams.
Of course, Grantham then had, and very likely still has a portfolio of oil firms.
He also set on our old chum Neil (Professor Pantsdown) Ferguson. The Pandemic and general medical prognosticator that has never been less than one order of magnitude exaggerating risk and outshone himself in some “five orders of magnitude” super scares.
The very bloke who was chosen by the blue arse cheek of the Uniparty to help Stalin’s Nanny Susan Michie in her agit prop nudging.
Now elevated to the WHO, together with Welcome Trust’s Jeremy Farrar.
So, are Grantham (and Kyte) somehow to be considered ax Big Oil people?
Well in some sense. I’m certain that Grantham and his chums are bright enough to have no doubt that Net Zero is bollox on stilts.
But destroying coal in the UK (obviously not in China, India, Indonesia etc.) was a good move in boosting the value of his oil stocks. Gas will be next to be destroyed and Ed Milibrain (of Climate Change Act 2008 again) is now facilitating this endgame).
And destroying Western Economies is the ultimate aim.anyway, as Christina Figueres has confirmed.
That tin of tomato soup could have gone to a food bank. What a bunch of degenerates!
Throwing food around is what toddlers do in high-chairs.
Vastly over-rated. Heinz soup and the picture. That said, it’s damage to someone’s property so whatever the law says for that.
I think MajorMajor has it right: Leave them there. Just to make sure nobody assaults them put some sort of barrier around them (which might accidentality also mean that none of their mates could come along and free them). I also think that’s what should be done when people glue themselves to the road – a few bollards and a hi-vis tarpaulin to try to make sure nobody runs them over – then get the traffic moving around them. Similar for the M25 gantry protests – a quick net fixed underneath and then get the traffic moving again.
Activism is all well and good. If there is injustice that is clear by all means, We often hear the supporters of JSO and Extinction Rebellion etc compare them to the Suffragettes, but these people were protesting about rights for women and the vote. But it was crystal clear that women were not being allowed the vote. Climate Change being caused by the use of fossil fuels is not so clear. It is riddled with uncertainty and is always a question of degree. There has to be an evaluation of cost/benefit and the benefit of fossil fuels is clear. They have brought billions of people out of abject poverty, and this is the part of the equation that JSO etc simply do not accept, basically because they understand virtually nothing about how energy works. So we cannot have energy policy based on faith and emotion, and there comes a point where the activism goes too far all based on irrational fear. These climate activists are starting to go too far and they must be nipped in the bud before people get seriously hurt or worse.
The issue of votes for women was not at all clear. As late as 1917 many working class men did not have the vote either – it wasn’t just women who were not enfranchised. And much of the opposition to votes for women came from women themselves.
Judge Christopher Hehir…told the activists to come to court “prepared in practical and emotional terms to go to prison…”
Many years ago, at a time when UK football hooliganism was world news, a taxi driver in Singapore took me on a tour, and drew up outside a large grim 19th-century brick building. It was Changi jail. ‘No hooliganism in Singapore,’ he stated with a proud air. ‘You get the cane here, you don’t sit down for six months.’
With our prisons full, and offenders undeterred by the thought of a little comfy custody at the public expense, maybe it’s time to look East and rediscover how we used to deal with juvenile delinquents. Maybe Judge Hehir should have told the soup-flingers to prepare not to sit down for 6 months.
We obviously need to heed their great wisdom and knowledge. They have shown us such great incites into the abyss the world is headed into if we do not stop using oil. So young to know so much. What really drives them is their narcissistic egos looking for attention and purpose. We can only hope they grow up some day, but living in their urban protected group think bubbles, there is doubt they will.