Tuesday 27th June: How and why the media perpetuates culture wars

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This is a pretty daft story with extremely dark undertones. Basically Fox News — a broadcaster whose lax attitude to the truth has recently been demonstrated beyond doubt — wrote that a schoolgirl had told a teacher she identifies as a cat. It was, of course, total nonsense and a blatant bit of transphobic dogwhistling, and you’d have hoped it would have ended there.

But because we live in a cynical farce of an age, the “news” was picked up sans fact-check by many right-wing titles to the point that politicians were asked about it. As of the time of writing a British freelance journalist is asking for further examples of the imaginary phenomena, and is getting playfully dogpiled — despite not identifying as any sort of hound. The whole thing reeks of being a headline in search of a story.

And the lack of journalistic rigour and/or any research has got you down, this article will make it worse. As Nesrine Malik explains, it’s a textbook case of moral panic being ginned up in service of a culture war. It’s not surprising that some of the UK papers have glommed onto it — fake outrage about imaginary issues is their stock in trade — but it is depressing. Anyway, happy Tuesday!

Every now and then you need to step back and view the news industry in the wider context of, well, content. That’s everything from music to cinema to streaming services - basically everything with which news competes for money and time. This is a good look at the macroeconomics of news and entertainment, and it’s not entirely bad news either!

AI has been used in newsrooms for years - and you can even download handy guides on how best to use it practically. This is a good argument for why editors are more necessary now than ever in the new age of AI, even if it will have you asking ‘did an editor write this?’

This is a tangled web, with claims of Russophobia and counter-espionage clouding the view of the issues. Whatever your take on Lebedev as an individual (or his ridiculous beard), I’d argue the real issue is the porous membrane between the fifth estate and the powerful they are designed to hold in check.

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