tiny tomato

Kristen Schaal, I love you.

Hillary 2016

WOMEN HAVE SEEN THIS COMING FOR YEARS

If there’s one thing both sides can agree on, is cable news punditry jeopardized our democracy. We don’t have journalists on cable news anymore, we have reality tv hosts and contestants.

Subscribe to your local and/or national newspapers, support local news networks, and turn off cable news, the survival of our democracy depends on it.

what, you mean after TWO FUCKING YEARS OF NON-STOP COVERAGE OF SOMEONE’S STUPID EMAILS IT FINALLY FUCKING OCCURRED TO THE PRESS THAT MAYBE THIS BULLSHIT WAS A BAD IDEA NOW IT OCCURS TO THEM? NOW???????

As a journalist, I ABHORE broadcast journalism. Watching others work in it, I’ve learned it is less attuned to fact-checking, it is less attuned to legitimate investigative reporting because its entire system of continuation is based on RATINGS. It’s about breaking the news and getting the attention, not breaking the factually accurate, culturally aware report. Doing that takes time and time is not on their side. I know people who work in broadcast, I’ve competed for news coverage with broadcast. And despite my friends who are in it, I will say this: I think it’s one of the lowest forms of journalism there is. 

90% of our news, whether read, watched or listened to, is dominated by six media giants:

All of these companies are in some ways controlling the information you get, but far more importantly and in many more ways, how you get it. The Clinton email scandal wasn’t bad because it persisted. It was bad because of HOW it persisted, continuously raising doubts about whether or not Clinton had done something illegal. Continuously putting into question her trustworthiness. They didn’t have to cover the emails that way. They chose to. 

If you are looking for better news sources, here are five independently run outlets that I trust for most of my political news. They are not perfect, they still deal with bias, but journalism is supposed to serve as a check and balance for the people. That’s why we protect the freedom of the press. These outlets serve as stronger checks and balances than most of their competitors. 

And for heaven’s sake, pay them what you can affort. Journalism costs money. I’m not sure about the others, but at this moment The Guardian is running a loss.

The trouble is, the damage has been done. Because “subscribe to your local newspapers” isn’t on the table anymore: local newspapers have been decimated in the past two decades. In the vacuum, a vast ecosystem of half-news, half-bald-propaganda from the far-right has filled up Facebook feeds. Before I unfriended him, I obsessively watched what my Trump-loving cousin was sharing on FB. Breitbart was by far the most ~mainstream. Most things I could spot as outright fabrications. Some I had to fact-check myself. He and his friends—white, middle-class people with some college or college degrees and white-collar jobs, so typical Trump voters—swallowed it.

This was the subject of a This American Life episode a few weeks ago and in the introduction, Ira Glass says one of the things that’s haunted me more than anything these past few weeks. After explaining the actual alternate reality millions of Americans were living in, after he played a clip of Rush Limbaugh saying “this fact-checking technique” is a cover-up for “opinion-based journalism.” “I think this is it,” Ira says. “This is the rest of our lives now.”

The only role left for the real press, the titles named above, the magazines I write and work for, is to serve as a check on the government, just like the previous poster said. The executive branch, both halves of Congress, and soon the Supreme Court: we go on about checks and balances, but anyone who lived through the Bush administration knows what happens when everyone’s on the same side. We need to support these publications as watchdogs. 

I know my own employer, The New Yorker, plans to take this role, or hopes so, anyway. But I’m already seeing outlets I respect hand-wringing over Trump voters, asking how we can understand them, the same shit that humanized their racism and xenophobia during the campaign. People are reporting on the hate crimes happening right now, but they bring on some random white person to say, “Oh, I don’t think that’s happening,” and they go, “That’s both sides of the story!” like they always do. So I don’t have a lot of hope right now. There are a LOT of people to blame about this clusterfuck, and the media knows they’re one of them. But I just don’t think they understand why.

Autumn Cat by Lhûn

“Nothing’s going to change, Jo.”

When I start panicking out about everything, this is the line that comes into my head. Every. single. time. And it doesn’t even make sense that this is my go-to, given its context.

This is a gooooood look.

Anjelica Huston / Photography by Bob Stone / 1972

#weareorlando #loveislove

Fortune cookie, James Springall

A guide to edible flowers

From http://luckypeach.com/floral-food-faces