Brane Space: The Fake Video Of Pelosi Isn't Just About The Morons Who Believed It- But The Media That Covered It

Trump has lied more than any other President in history. Americans need to process that.

Nancy Pelosi's rebuke of Facebook on account of being a willing party to a clearly manipulated video of her was more than justified (WSJ, yesterday, p. A2). Facebook's line at the time was that its members ought to be free to "decide for themselves" the veracity of media content, including an obviously doctored youtube video. Alas, fifty years ago when the bulk of Americans were well -read and not chained to screens which lowered their IQs that may have been so. But no longer. We now must depend again on responsible media gate keepers to save 'Muricans from their own worst instincts and idiocy.

I first saw the fake Pelosi video on Chris Hayes' 'All In' show last Friday. Like other mainstream media outlets, it was presented side-by-side with the un-doctored footage of the House speaker. This was in an effort to debunk the viral clips which had been created and circulated by Right wing Agitprop specialists to snooker and distract the lower IQ segment of our nation.

Neither Janice or I would have been fooled even if we'd only been shown the doctored footage, of what has now become known in techie parlance as “deepfake” videos . In the case of the one circulated and touted on FAUX News as if real, Pelosi's speech had been subtly slowed down and then pitch-corrected to make it appear as if the House speaker was drunk or incapacitated . It was an obvious fake to anyone who's seen Pelosi, thus Janice and I concluded only an imbecile would be fooled by it.

Facebook did not remove the video but eventually added “fact check” links to the clips, which most users likely ignored or didn't see. Journalists and pundits debated the social networks’ decisions to leave the video up, while others lamented the rise of political misinformation, filter bubbles, the future of “deepfake” videos and the internet’s penchant to warp reality.

But what is needed here is a larger context examination of how the corporate media itself is being outplayed by the liars, propagandists and pro-Trump fifth columnists (such as embedded at FOX News) in our midst. It has even gone beyond millions of citizens accepting the fake video at face value, to whether too many in the so-called "serious" media are themselves being played like puppets.

Eric Alterman, writing in a piece ('Lord of the Lies') appearing in a recent issue of The Nation (June 5-10, p. 10) notes, for example:

"Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star, who tracks Trump's deceptions, says that most journalists rarely bother to mention that Trump's statements are filled with falsehoods. 'If you watched a network news segment, read an Associated Press article, or glanced at the front page of the city that hosted him, you'd typically have no idea that he was wholly inaccurate'. Most coverage, Dale points out, reads something like 'Trump speaks to big, excited crowd, insults X and Y, talks policy Z'"

Which is a sorry, cartoonish template that - if Walter Cronkite were alive today - he'd laugh at. He'd wonder what school of journalism the perpetrators had attended - if they did at all. Incredibly too, Trump often lies about the lies and the media almost never really hone in on it. Well a few did when Trump blurted out in a tweet several days ago: "I had nothing to do with Russia helping to get me elected!" Huh? The detestable toad then denied it, insisting to the yapping press corps that he never said any such thing. A Freudian slip then?

Another egregious example cited by Alterman occurred when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly in September last year and trotted out of his favorites, i.e. he had "accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country."

Caught out by hundreds with IQs far superior to his - "the assembled audience burst into laughter". He was "briefly left speechless" before realizing he needed another lie to cover his humiliation, i.e. "he didn't expect that reaction". So then he ad-libbed the lie that "he meant to get some laughs."

But while this one was good for yucks, others have had more real world consequences, such as at a Green Bay rally on April 27. There he related this wholesale whopper to a crowd of drooling MAGA goons who accepted it without question (ibid.):

"The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether to execute the baby."

Did any of the local papers or media expose this claptrap? Nope, not even The Green Bay Press -Gazette, so perhaps it was outside their reporting wheelhouse. But that lies at the heart of how our nation is getting mind-fucked day in and day out. The press repeatedly being left sucking air and unable to catch up with all the lies, because Trump is treated with excess respect instead of plain contempt - in the futile effort to appear "objective'". And so, with little or no blowback from the 4th estate (bloggers like me with lesser audiences having to call out the crap) such atrocious lies continue to make abortion providers targets of domestic terrorists - even as assorted backward states pass abortion banning laws.

Another example that rivals the preceding in vileness was Trump on Memorial Day, siding with the most bestial, bloodthirsty tyrant on the planet - Kim Jong Un. Asked a question by the ever somnolent mainstream Washington press corps, Trump responded he had to believe Kim, who told him "Biden is a low IQ individual". This degeneracy did get a reply from Biden's campaign manager Kate Bedingfield the day after, i.e. in The Denver Post (May 29, p. 17A):

"For anyone to appear on Memorial Day and to side with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former vice-president speaks for itself."

Only mentioned near the very end of the piece was that a half imbecile member of the press corps had actually asked Trump about "the North Korean leader's (earlier) description of the Democrat's intelligence level."

WTF?! Why is this even in the question mix? Only an ignorant buffoon would ask that knowing full well how Dotard would respond given his ongoing bromance with the N. Korean swine. But it gets to the heart of how much of the media itself is responsible for the mess we're in. I mean if we can't depend on the press to be critical thinkers how can we expect the ordinary citizen to be?

Alterman near the end of his piece writes "thankfully most Americans don't believe Trump" - citing fewer than 3 in 10 according to a WaPO Fact Checker. However he also writes:

"What worries me, however, is that people don't realize how much more dishonest Trump is than any of his predecessors. Only about 50 percent of Americans think he is 'less honest' than any previous president".

Which thereby conflates most presidents as liars in some form and worse, fails to hurl Trump into the depths to which he belongs. Much of this again, is because of the media and mainstream press which often repeats his idiotic tweets without criticizing them properly - merely assuming (as in the case of the Pelosi fake video) most Americans have the intelligence and sense to separate what's factual from rubbish. Well, they don't!

How to respond? In particular how should the media treat them: as official communications with all the gravitas of a presidential official statement or announcement - through the orthodox, standard channels? Or as disruptive refuse no better than environmental toxic waste?

Some (e.g. Journalism prof Indira Lakshmanan) have proposed repeating the tweets, but then doing a fact check. The problem with that is twofold: first, most people will have already seen the tweets say on the morning or evening news. Doing a follow-up fact check will then be too late and of minimal impact. Thus, Trumpers' erroneous beliefs and fables are merely reinforced in a kind of confirmation bias. (As manifested in a recent Justin Amash town hall, with one of his conservo constituents, see e.g. the lead off link below.)

Second, the very act of repeating the offending tweet has the effect of dignifying it - even if unintentionally. (The same, obviously, applied to the treatment of the Pelosi fake video).

Back to the fake Pelosi video which the FOX News trolls (e.g. Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson et al) actually broadcast and integrated into their newscasts as evidence she was unfit to be House Speaker. That above all revived for me the danger of propaganda and its effects on the brain as shown in the excellent PBS documentary series, ''The Brain'. The series featured neuroscientist David Eagleman who explored the role of that organ in social connections, as well as genocide and propaganda. His key finding?

"A basic, single word label is enough to change your brain's pre-conscious response to a person in pain, in other words, how much you care about them."

In this context, the impact on the brains of those who watched the Pelosi video - and didn't detect the obvious distortions - would have interjected a virulent anti -Pelosi bias. Even in the more benign media treatments, whether repeating the lie or attempting to knock it down, the predominant political narrative suddenly became squarely on Pelosi’s health, not her competence.

As the video views continued to climb, I had to concur with Charlie Warzel in a recent Times piece that our attention was successfully hijacked by a remedial iMovie trick. It’s easy to fall back on the notion that the Pelosi viral videos are an example of a broken system. But that’s not exactly true. Many of the forces that led this particular doctored video to become news are part of an efficient machine designed to do exactly this. Our media distribution systems are working just as intended. They just weren’t designed for our current political moment.

Alterman and other media critics like Robert McChesney and Norman Solomon estimate it may take the U.S. media ecosystem years, decades to adapt. But we don't have that time while a pathological liar and criminal Vulgarian fouls the nation and the presidency every moment he tweets or talks.

As Warzel also notes: Facebook, by virtue of the fact that it made $16.6 billion in advertising revenue last quarter, is a media company. But Facebook wasn’t designed to be a media company, especially not one in the middle of an information war. As a platform, Facebook has no real responsibility for the veracity of its content; as a media company, it most certainly does.

Similarly, the press has few answers for how to cover propaganda in an online environment that is designed to spread hoaxes. The heart of the reporting process breaks down when your adversaries’ only goal is to hijack attention. (See David Brooks' recent column in the NY Times on how much of the net is ideally adapted to infiltration by pathological, psychopathic trolls. The type who traffic in wacko conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and the QAnon deep state B.S.)

And then there’s the political reality; the media has even fewer answers for how to deal with a president and his associates who are as prone to trafficking in these wacko conspiracies as they are to breathe. The media then becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of newsworthiness, diverting attention and outrage to false claims and viral hoaxes. After all, the Pelosi fakes weren’t newsworthy because they were high-tech, but because the lie was so blatant and spread by powerful individuals.

In other words, it’s not only our systems that our broken, and being degraded by the day, but our whole political landscape. And it’s only going to get worse. We need a new handbook. And quick. We definitely need a more advanced form of journalism that can better adapt to compulsive liar leaders - especially those who cozy up to bloodthirsty tyrants.

See also:

Donald Trump