trump – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Trump 2.0 Is Proving To Be A Bonanza For More Harmful Consolidation Among Broadband Giants

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Despite the ongoing fake promise of “populism,” so far Trump 2.0 has proven to be a bonanza for telecom giants seeking to get even bigger. As usual that means higher broadband prices and shittier broadband service are just over the horizon.

As a reward for promising to be more racist, Verizon recently saw its 20billionmergerwithFrontierapprovedbytheTrumpFCC.ComcastisrumoredtobeeyeingamergerwithT−Mobile.AndcablegiantCharterispushingforanew[20 billion merger with Frontier approved by the Trump FCC. Comcast is rumored to be eyeing a merger with T-Mobile. And cable giant Charter is pushing for a new [20billionmergerwithFrontierapprovedbytheTrumpFCC.ComcastisrumoredtobeeyeingamergerwithT−Mobile.AndcablegiantCharterispushingforanew34.5 billion merger with Cox Communications. As usual, the two companies are promising that more industry mergers will somehow make the sector more competitive:

“This combination will augment our ability to innovate and provide high-quality, competitively priced products, delivered with outstanding customer service, to millions of homes and businesses,” Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said in the press release. “We will continue to deliver high-value products that save American families money, and we’ll onshore jobs from overseas to create new, good-paying careers for U.S. employees.”

We’ve got forty years of hard data illustrating that this is not what happens when you let the U.S. telecom industry consolidate. Even if two merging companies don’t directly compete, the resulting telecom companies tend to be more politically powerful than ever. And one of their favorite pastimes involves abusing that political power to crush all competition and regulatory oversight.

Charter is, you might recall, the company that almost got kicked out of New York State after it lied to regulators repeatedly about whether it was meeting requirements fixed to its merger with Time Warner Cable.

These mergers never serve the public interest. And America’s historically too corrupt to care. Such consolidation helps temporarily boost stock valuations and generate rich tax cuts, while overcompensated executives celebrate their savvy deal-making acumen. The public harms of consolidation is then swept under the carpet with the help of an equally consolidated corporate press and captured regulators.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

So Trump 2.0 is both encouraging more of this harmful consolidation at the same time they’re taking an absolute hatchet to whatever was left of regulatory autonomy and corporate oversight. It’s the culmination of a generation of delusion by right wingers and Libertarian “free market” guys who (quite falsely) claim that unchecked monopolization results in near-mystical Utopian outcomes.

It doesn’t: letting telecom giants like Verizon and Comcast get bigger while you dismantle government oversight only results in those giants doubling down on existing bad behaviors. Again, that always means exploiting regional geographic monopolies and duopolies to drive up prices, undermining small business, fraudulently obtaining more taxpayer subsidies, and eroding the exact free market competition the supporters of these deals claim to be such huge proponents of. It’s utterly theatrical.

The same thing is playing out in media, with companies like Time Warner Discovery calling for even more mergers and greater media consolidation under Trump — at a time when the enshittification from such consolidation couldn’t be any more apparent. That’s simultaneously resulting in shittier journalism, higher prices, lower quality choices, and a flood of corporatist bullshit and right wing propaganda.

U.S. broadband is a patchwork of regional monopolies, coddled by corrupt federal and state lawmakers, who’ve worked tirelessly to demolish anything closely resembling competition in local broadband markets. U.S. media is a lazy patchwork of consolidated corporate giants obsessed with “growth for growth’s sake.” More mindless consolidation is the exact opposite of what these industries need.

We’ve taken that already broken model and somehow managed to make it dumber and more harmful under Trump 2.0, by fusing it all to the erratic whims of authoritarian zealots. Zealots looking to further exploit the merger approval process in exchange for these companies’ promises that they’ll be more racist and shittier than ever. Great stuff. What could go wrong?

Filed Under: antitrust, broadband, competition, consolidation, corruption, fcc, mergers, oversight, racism, regulation, trump
Companies: charter, cox communications

White House Falsely Calls NPR, PBS A “Grift,” Moves To Cut Already Modest Funding In Latest Attack On Journalism And Informed Consensus

from the terrified-of-the-truth dept

Fri, Apr 18th 2025 05:30am - Karl Bode

Authoritarians don’t much like journalism, education, or informed consensus for what should be obvious reasons. But the far right has long had a particular animosity for publicly-funded broadcasting. In part, because when done right, public broadcasting is free of the kind of perverse financial incentives that results in the kind of feckless, truth-averse, “both sides” journalism we all saw last election season.

Of course in the U.S. we don’t really do public broadcasting particularly well. In a good piece over at The Nation, University of Pennsylvania professor Victor Pickard notes how the generational demonization of public media by the right routinely starves it of funding. That forces it to lean more heavily on commercial funding, which then results in journalism that looks a lot like the rest of our feckless, corporatized mush:

“By any measure, US government support for public media is paltry. The $535 million that Congress currently allocates to the CPB covers roughly 1 percent of NPR’s and 15 percent of PBS’s budget. To even call this a public system is a misnomer; most funding for public media comes from private sources in the form of individual donations, philanthropic grants, and corporate sponsorships.”

So the U.S. version of “public broadcasting” is decidedly half assed. Yet it still gets endlessly demonized by the right wing as some sort of extremist concept. That happened again this week when the White House issued a statement full of lies about public broadcasting, calling NPR and PBS a “grift”:

“For years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for subsidizing National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as “news.” As President Trump has stated, taxpayer funding of NPR’s and PBS’s biased content is a waste.”

White House budget director Russ Vought has drafted a so-far-unpublished memo for a rescission plan that will eliminate funding already approved by Congress, including $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

The far right doesn’t want reformers untethering journalism and media from commercial interests because they know that model is eminently exploitable, something that hasn’t been subtle the last few years. Looking for major merger approvals, tax cuts, and mindless deregulation, consolidated U.S. media companies have demonstrated they’re more than willing to throw the truth under the bus for financial gain. You see it absolutely everywhere you look. Again: not remotely subtle.

Running journalism as a traditional business has been positively fatal for informed consensus in the U.S. The country is awash with news deserts where the only news people get are either AM radio (dominated by right wing propaganda), broadcast news (dominated by right wing propagandists at Sinclair and Fox), or national cable news (dominated by right wing propagandists at Fox News).

When election season comes, and huge swaths of the electorate vote in favor of their own fucking immolation, political and polling experts then stand around with a stupid look on their face wondering why the public appears to have heads full of peddles and pudding. Democrats who could be pushing for media reforms or consolidation limits have instead often chosen to ignore the problem, and here we are.

Pickard’s research at UPenn has shown that publicly-funded journalism can result in healthier democracies overall for this very reason. If you strip away the problems caused by chasing ad engagement or coddling power for quarterly financial gain, journalism is more incentivized to tell people the actual truth and less incentivized to pull punches.

Not only has the right wing constantly starved public broadcasting of funding forcing them to embrace more traditional commercialization, Trump’s earlobe nibbler over at the FCC, Brendan Carr, is now launching sham investigations into public broadcasting’s reliance on commercials. Carr claims, without evidence, PBS and NPR are violating on-air sponsorship or “underwriting” rules.

Again, this has nothing to do with government efficiency or saving taxpayers money. It has everything to do with authoritarians controlling the flow of information and the shape of modern media, which they prefer to be a combination of right wing propaganda and feckless, obedient, oligarch controlled consolidated media giants too afraid to do their fucking jobs.

Filed Under: authoritarian, disinformation, journalism, media, propaganda, public broadcasting, russell vought, trump
Companies: npr, pbs

Phone Companies Still Suck At Stopping Unwanted Scam Robocalls, Something That Will Get Much Worse Under Trump 2.0

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

Wed, Feb 12th 2025 05:32am - Karl Bode

We’ve long noted how absurd it is that scammers, debt collectors, and greedy telemarketers have ruined our voice communications networks. We’ve somehow just normalized it.

We’ve also noted how a big reason our robocall problem never gets fixed is because Congress and regulators routinely fixate on scammers and not on the “legit” companies like debt collectors that use the same tactics and routinely undermine reform and enforcement efforts.

Another major problem is that federal regulators refuse to hold phone companies accountable for their lagging efforts to combat fraud and spam. Case in point: Truecaller’s U.S. Spam and Scam Report found that half of all major U.S. phone companies earned a D or F in their efforts to combat annoying robocalls and scams.

The study surveyed nearly two dozen U.S. home phone and wireless providers, and found countless providers hadn’t yet implemented SHAKEN/STIR technology to combat spoofed phone numbers. Many still don’t even bother to provide very basic services like on-screen scam warnings for incoming calls, or tools allowing customers to block calls that don’t display Caller ID.

“It’s unconscionable that these multi-bazillion-dollar companies don’t use every preventative measure available while scammers rip off innocent, vulnerable consumers every single day,” said Teresa Murray, Consumer Watchdog Director for U.S. PIRG Education Fund and author of Who’s Calling? “Even if we don’t fall prey to a scam, we waste countless hours a year answering unwanted calls, sorting out what’s legitimate or just having our concentration broken while we’re trying to work, relax or enjoy family time.”

Again, the federal government every six months over the last decade has announced they were “taking new steps” to crack down on the problem of automated scam calls. Yet according to the latest data from the YouGov Robocall Index, U.S. consumers received just over 4.7 billion robocalls in January 2025, marking a nearly 9% increase from December 2024.

Again, there are lots of reasons for this that have long been documented by groups like the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC).

A corrupted court system has consistently limited the FCC’s authority to combat robocalls. Government officials, corrupted by lobbying influence, routinely refuse to hold big companies accountable for their roles in either enabling or refusing to block scams. Those corrupted lawmakers like to keep the focus on scammers, when many “legit” companies leverage the exact same tactics as scammers.

As Trump takes a hatchet to whatever’s left of the authority of agency’s like the FCC, you can absolutely expect the problem to get worse. The Biden FCC at least made a passing effort to pressure big wireless companies to accelerate the deployment of anti-spoofing tech, and would consistently fine the lowest hanging fruit in the scumbag and scammer ecosystem (see: Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman).

In contrast the Trump FCC is now run by a guy who has never stood up to a telecom giant in his life, and seems more interested in leveraging the FCC to threaten broadcasters who don’t adequately kiss authoritarian ass or who factually report the news. And the Trump-stocked Supreme Court and DOGE are dead set on turning regulators like the FCC into the functional equivalent of decorative seasonal gourds.

Contrary to the fever dreams of MAGA cultists and “free market libertarian think tank” folks, there’s a reason we have something vaguely resembling coherent federal governance and semi-cogent regulators. Even worse robocalls will be one of countless, and very painful, crash courses on the subject.

Filed Under: fcc, phone calls, regulators, scam, scammers, spam, trump

Analysts Think America’s Two Biggest And Shittiest Cable Giants (Comcast, Charter) Could Merge Under Trump 2.0

from the merge-ALL-the-things! dept

Thu, Jan 23rd 2025 12:26pm - Karl Bode

Despite a lot of bullshit about how Trump is super “populist,” “supports antitrust reform,” and will “carry on the legacy of monopoly busters like Lina Khan,” none of that has ever been true. Trump’s first administration was jam packed with the rubber stamping of plenty of terrible mergers. Streaming, media, and telecom companies are very excited about what Trump 2.0 has in store.

Fail upward media brunchlords like David Zaslav are extremely excited about the potential for more terrible mergers (like the Time Warner Discovery disaster) in the streaming space. CBS is already busy kissing Trump’s ass in exchange for what it hopes will be Trump approval of its Skydance merger.

And analysts in telecom land are licking their chops at the idea of all manner of senseless consolidation in broadband land, including a merger between two of the most hated companies in America: Comcast (Xfinity) and Charter (Spectrum):

“We believe a Comcast/Charter merger could make industrial logical sense given the scale and subsequent massive synergies,” wrote the financial analysts at TD Cowen.”

“It is an obvious transaction,” said analyst Walter Piecyk with LightShed Partners in a video posted on social media.”

These guys aren’t really interested in whether the union creates a better company, or a better product, or happier consumers, or a stronger overall market. They’re interested in watching stock valuations (temporarily) go up. The last Trump administration was quick to rubber stamp the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, which immediately caused most U.S. wireless price competition to grind to a halt.

Comcast and Charter (usually) don’t directly compete. But as any academic that studies corporate power (especially telecom corporate power) will tell you, that doesn’t really matter.

The consolidation still strengthens the power of the underlying monopoly, and that scale always (especially in the broken, uncompetitive telecom market) routinely results in a company that’s increasingly hostile to remaining competitors, labor, and healthy supply chains. And increasingly influential in DC circles, where they lobby relentlessly to ensure competitive alternatives can’t take root.

It’s not really subtle or debatable, you can look directly at the history of the highly consolidated U.S. telecom market (coddled by decades of corruption and regulatory capture) to see precisely what this looks like in practice. Comcast and Charter are genuinely terrible, uninnovative companies because they’ve crushed all remaining competitors and largely defanged competent government oversight.

The deregulation, undermining of antitrust enforcement, and broad defanging of oversight is always framed by telecom monopolies (and their vast assorted consultants, think tanks, and mouthpieces) as the path toward true “free marketing competition” and “innovation.” But as Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter routinely make clear, that promised future simply never arrives.

I enjoy reading trade magazine and business press coverage of this sort of thing, because it’s amusing how consumer welfare, market health, the public interest, labor rights, or even basic historical context, simply don’t exist. All the well documented and potential harms of mindless telecom consolidation are simply not mentioned. At all. Despite being rather integral to both the story and public understanding.

In its place, generally, is the most superficial of rhetoric about “synergies” and “innovation” that aren’t based on much of anything beyond vibes.

I suspect the Trump administration could approve a merger between Comcast and Charter. More immediately they’ll approve the already-proposed merger between the equally terrible Frontier and Verizon. And they’ll most certainly approve more terrible streaming mergers, resulting in higher prices, layoffs, and lower quality services. Assuming these companies adequately kiss the ring.

The press will unquestioningly parrot the mythological benefits of mindless consolidation and deregulation. And when the consolidative telecom market harms manifest, as they always do, everybody involved will simply pretend they had nothing to do with it as they stumble onward to the next big, pointless, stock-fluffing deal.

Filed Under: broadband, consolidation, consumer, fcc, high speed internet, mergers, telecom, trump
Companies: charter, comcast

Dish Tries To Distract Everyone From Doomed 5G Network By Proposing Pointless Merger With Echostar

from the hey,-look-behind-you! dept

Thu, Jul 13th 2023 10:49am - Karl Bode

We just got done noting how Dish Network’s long-hyped 5G wireless network is likely doomed. While they’re technically building a “wireless network,” the network’s coverage, phone selection, and overall quality has proven laughable so far, and there have been growing worries that Dish is running out of cash.

Hoping to distract the press and regulators from this fact, Dish last week leaked word that they were considering a merger with satellite provider Echostar (spun out from Dish back in 2008).

Like so many U.S. megadeals the merger is a pointless one. Dish Network is saddled with debt, on the regulatory hook for a 5G network they’ll probably never finish, and is consistently bleeding not only traditional satellite TV subscribers, but the streaming video and wireless users its pivot was supposed to have been luring in by the bucketful.

Duct-taping Echostar to the side of this mess would be a giant distraction, likely result in pointless layoffs, and, outside of the stock bump and tax breaks, serves no technical function. And it generally smells like a desperation move from Dish CEO Charlie Ergen, who has a general reputation as an annoyingly and sometimes pointlessly stubborn negotiator and a bit of a cheapskate:

Ergen is as cautious and calculating in dealmaking as he was during his days as a professional gambler, when he was kicked out of a Lake Tahoe casino for counting cards. The sticky governance issues mean he would have to pay top dollar to get EchoStar, and he’s not known for that.

You might recall the Dish network was the Trump-era “fix” for the competitive erosion caused by the Sprint and T-Mobile merger. We noted back in 2019 that the whole thing was a doomed mess custom built by Trump-era “antitrust enforcers” as a flimsy way to justify additional industry consolidation.

Now the check’s coming due. While Dish has technically met the FCC’s obligation to craft a wireless network reaching 70% of the population (concentrated in a handful of major cities), the network reach, quality, and phone selection has generally been laughed at in terms of Dish being a valid player in the wireless space.

And it gets harder for Dish now. The next FCC-set benchmark is to reach 75 percent of the U.S. population by 2025, but that involves pushing into a lot more higher deployment cost rural and suburban markets. That’s hard to do when you’re running out of money and nobody takes your wireless play seriously (outside of a handful of telecom trade magazines whose ads and event funding rely on a cozy relationship with industry).

I still suspect this all ends with Ergen selling his vast troves of spectrum holdings and half-completed network to somebody like Verizon, and the FCC doling out a tiny wrist slap (if that) for Dish missing deployment obligations. And the Trump-era regulators that birthed this turd of a plan pretending the whole thing never happened.

The collapse will result in a bunch of layoffs and consumer annoyance. But everybody high up in the chain will have gotten what they wanted, ensuring nobody learns anything. Ergen gets a big load of cash from spectrum holdings that appreciated as feckless U.S. regulators were strung along for years. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint see less competition. And Trump-era officials got the pointless consolidation they craved.

Filed Under: 5g, consolidation, fcc, megamergers, merger, regulators, telecom, trump, wireless
Companies: dish, echostar

NY AG Doles Out Wrist Slap Fine To Companies That Helped Telecom Giants Use Fake And Dead People To Lie About Net Neutrality

from the fake-plastic-trees dept

Fri, May 12th 2023 05:31am - Karl Bode

You might recall how when U.S. telecom giants lobbied the Trump FCC to kill net neutrality, they hired a bunch of PR firms to flood the FCC with fake comments from a bunch of fake and dead people. The goal: create the illusion of support for shitty, unpopular policies. It’s a pretty popular tactic by corporations and lobbying firms looking to influence the government and/or create the illusion of consensus.

In 2021, New York Attorney General Leticia James unveiled a report (also see accompanying statement) proving what most people already knew: the broadband industry was behind the use of fake and dead people to generate bogus support for the FCC’s controversial 2017 repeal of net neutrality. The report didn’t name any specific broadband companies and only singled out the proxy firms they used.

Several years later, and James’ office has finally managed to dole out a wrist slap fine ($615,000) for the three PR and policy firms used by the broadband industry: LCX Digital Media, Lead ID, LLC., and Ifficient Inc. All three “lead generation” companies also worked for other companies looking to influence policies at agencies like the EPA. And not for the betterment of competent policymaking or mankind.

Once again, none of the telecom monopolies that actually hired the firms (Comcast and AT&T are often suspected to be the most active in these kinds of campaigns) are even named in the announcement, despite James likely knowing full well who paid for these “services.” In a statement, James tries to pretend that such a half-assed penalty will actually change anything:

“No one should have their identity co-opted by manipulative companies and used to falsely promote a private agenda,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in an announcement Wednesday.

Again, these fake comment efforts are glorified propaganda campaigns by deep-pocketed corporations designed to provide flimsy cover for corrupt and captured regulators to make policy decisions that are opposed by a majority of Americans (the repeal of net neutrality saw widespread, bipartisan opposition).

One such effort plagued a proceeding at the Labor Department, where numerous people who either don’t exist or don’t recall ever sending messages breathlessly opposed agency efforts to prevent conflicts of interest in retirement advice. The same problem plagued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau when it proposed a rule trying to rein in some of the nastier habits of the payday lending industry.

Nobody in government or policy circles ever seems to show much interest in getting to the bottom of this problem. The public rarely can be bothered to care either (kudos to you if you made it this far down this article). And in the rare instance where somebody does act (like the NY AG), the fines are a tiny pittance in relation to whatever policy proposal the companies were attempting to game out.

Now pause for a moment and consider how “AI” tech like ChatGPT will make these kinds of lobbying influence and propaganda campaigns cheaper and easier than ever just as we face a well-funded, deeply coordinated campaign to finally and fully defang the regulatory state once and for all.

Filed Under: broadband, chevron deference, consumer rights, fake comments, fcc, letitia james, net neutrality, propaganda, regulators, trump
Companies: ifficient, lcx digital media, lead id

New Report Shows How 2016 ‘DNC Hacked Itself’ Story Was Fabricated Garbage And The Nation Ran With It Anyway

from the propaganda-bonanza dept

Thu, Feb 9th 2023 05:28am - Karl Bode

Back in 2015, you might recall how the Russian Government was caught hacking into the DNC. It wasn’t particularly subtle; a Russian intelligence officer pretending to be a Romanian hacker made the dumb mistake of forgetting to turn on his VPN, revealing his Russian intelligence agency IP address to the world. The data he obtained concerning ongoing squabbling within the DNC was later leaked to the press to influence the 2016 election, and the rest is well documented history.

In the wake of the attack, a baseless rumor began to mysteriously make the rounds, suggesting that the DNC had, for some reason, hacked itself. The claim popped up everywhere, but its most notable traction came courtesy of an article over at The Nation, which took the claim and ran with it without doing even the most basic of fact checking. The claim then popped up all over the Internet, from Bloomberg opinion columns and Breitbart, to out of Donald Trump’s own mouth.

The problem: it was all absolute, unrefined, 100% bullshit.

What actually happened? Seven years after the fact, and journalist Duncan Campbell has finally published a story examining The Nation’s odd editorial history of stifling criticism of Russia internally. It also rips apart the Nation’s article, written by Patrick Lawrence, who, Campbell claims, repeated baseless claims made by pro-Trump trolls and hackers pretending to be intelligence analysts:

Lawrence invented situations and people, got facts wrong, and made far-reaching claims without substantiation. Information that Lawrence described as “hard evidence” had, in reality, been manufactured by members of a Trump-supporting website, Disobedient Media, founded in 2017 by William Craddick, a former law student who claimed to have started the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. The primary source in Lawrence’s story, cited eighteen times, was an anonymous figure, a supposed forensic expert known as “Forensicator.” That name was created by Disobedient Media in consultation with Tim Leonard, a British hacker, as an identity through which to present the “Forensicator report,” the document purporting to substantiate the “inside job” theory.

At the time, we pointed out how one of the key claims, that the speed at which the files had been transferred were too fast to have been done remotely over broadband, were absolute bullshit any actual intelligence expert or fact checker would have noticed. That resulted in an anti-Techdirt temper tantrum by the fake news troll in question over at his since-dismantled website.

Another cornerstone of The Nation’s story, the claim that a group of intelligence professionals like William Binney (dubbed the “VIPS”) had reviewed “Forensicator’s” evidence and corroborated its claims, also proved to be bullshit. Later on, Binney would admit to Campbell the entire thing was a “fabrication”:

When I met with Binney the next month, however, he told me that, when the Lawrence piece was published, the VIPS had not actually checked the evidence or reasoning in the Forensicator report. When Binney eventually looked into one of its key claims—that the stolen data could be proven to have been copied directly at a computer on the east coast—he changed his mind. There was “no evidence to prove where the copy was done”, he told me. The data “Forensicator” had given to VIPS had been “manipulated”, Binney said, and was “a fabrication”.

At that point, the pile on was afoot, and numerous outlets had security experts who also noted that The Nation story was bullshit. Instead of pulling the story, Campbell states that after significant pressure, The Nation co-owner and former editor Katrina vanden Heuvel finally affixed a “we were just asking questions” pre-amble to the head of piece, which was only quietly pulled offline last year (copy here).

Both vanden Huevel and new Nation editorial boss D.D. Guttenplan downplay the monumental fuck up in conversations with Campbell, at one point urging him to “get a life”:

When I ask Guttenplan about the controversy surrounding the Lawrence piece, he replies, “Water has gone under the bridge. I am comfortable.” He adds, “The Nation is a beacon for progressive ideas, democratic politics, women’s rights, racial and economic justice, and open debate between liberals and radicals.” Any damage done to the reputation of the magazine is minor, he argues, compared to all of the good it has done. What about the objections of his staff? “I don’t see the point of obsessing about it,” Guttenplan concludes. “Get a life!”

In 2018, a DOJ indictment against nearly a dozen Russian hackers would lay out in detail how Russian intelligence compromised the DNC, stole data, then carefully leaked that data to outlets like The Intercept to divide Democrats and improve Trump’s chance of winning the 2016 election (the author of said piece has since enjoyed a lucrative career spreading authoritarian apologia).

Fast forward seven years later, and there’s no shortage of supposed progressive journalists (some regulars at the Nation) with a strange affection for parroting Russian propaganda, and downplaying every and any instance of Russian authoritarian aggression, whether it’s denying the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on civilians, denying the idea that a Russian-government linked group shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine, or pretending that Ukraine is to blame for the war.

Campbell notes that Lawrence was allowed to write fifteen more features for The Nation in the year after the story was published, and there’s been no shortage of similar stories at the outlet written since by other authors with a tendency to downplay Russian authoritarianism. Some even referencing the “DNC hacked itself” theory as established fact.

Originally slated to appear in 2018, Campbell claims that his story was killed by Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) and then new editor Kyle Pope. Pope this week denied the story was killed, claiming it wasn’t run because it was late. Campbell has since written a second story outlining his experiences with CJR killing his story, claiming CJR had previously undisclosed business relationships with The Nation they didn’t want to jeopardize, and the story was “slow-walked to dismissal” after a year-long editing process.

Ultimately the whole dumb thing remains a cautionary tale of propaganda’s effective reach and U.S. journalism’s ongoing failure to counter or even recognize it, whether it’s coming from the U.S. or Russian government or a basement-dwelling troll half a world away. To this day, the lie that the DNC hacked itself remains a stone-cold fact in the brains of many right wingers and conspiracy theorists, and The Nation still, the better part of a decade later, hasn’t meaningfully owned the “error” heard ’round the world.

Filed Under: disinformation, dnc, dnc hacked itself, duncan campbell, guccifer 2.0, hacking, misinformation, privacy, propaganda, russian intelligence, security, trump
Companies: the nation

GOP Belatedly Realizes Its Embrace Of Propaganda And Conspiracy Results In Bizarre And Unpopular Candidates

from the head-full-of-pudding-and-hate dept

Wed, Feb 1st 2023 05:20am - Karl Bode

Frustrated by factual reality, science, and an independent press, the GOP and its wealthy backers have spent the better part of forty years building an alternative reality propaganda machine across AM radio, local broadcasting (with the help of Sinclair Broadcasting), fake “pink slime” local newspapers, cable news (OANN, Newsmax, Fox), and now the Internet.

While this propaganda machine has adequately insulated the modern Trump and Desantis GOP from the pesky menace of factual reality, there have been some downsides. The GOP’s belief that it no longer has to participate in public debates, for example, has resulted in a crop of insular, unpopular, and strange candidates who don’t have broader appeal — because they’re not participating in factual reality.

Amusingly, at least some Republican advisors appear to have realized this, and are urging the party to spend more time participating in real debates hosted by actual journalists. Or, at least, having debates where actual journalists are in attendance for some window dressing:

A Republican familiar with the conversations said the RNC is considering pairing mainstream outlets with conservative outlets as co-moderators, a regular feature of 2016 debates as well, to address member concerns about bias. The RNC’s proposal request includes a section for networks to fill out that dives into whether they’d be open to partnerships.

But part of the goal, the person said, would be to ensure candidates don’t get “softball questions that aren’t of substance” and that they are forced to “talk about policy and give answers.” The RNC meeting notably comes after a midterms in which a number of candidates popular in conservative media circles struggled to connect with independent voters in the general election.

Semafor, like most mainstream U.S. political outlets, can’t candidly acknowledge that Republicans built a hugely influential and successful propaganda machine, lest it upset sources, advertisers, or event sponsors. So their story kind of amusingly tap dances around the fact that a lot of the party’s problems in the midterms stemmed from out of touch delusion built on the back of a massively successful party propaganda machine.

It’s not clear that the party of Trump and Desantis, whose entire political careers involve agitating and dividing Americans using a rotating platter of unhinged conspiracy, bigotry, and outrage over everything from more energy efficient game consoles to inclusive candy branding, will ever actually listen to the handful of advisors warning about the impact of this isolation. In part because outrage and division is genuinely the only semi-meaningful policies they have.

GOP propaganda exploits a parade of U.S. policy failures across media (consolidation, death of local news), education (poor to no media savviness training), journalism (failure to develop independent funding models for an independent press), and the Internet (centralized social media platforms susceptible to the whims of unhinged billionaires).

But at some point, you’d imagine that the discourse and culture will develop policy fixes for some of these issues, and an immune response to candidates whose entire platform relies on unhinged conspiracies, bottomless outrage over minutiae, and vicious bigotry.

The GOP is hopeful that gerrymandering and propaganda will shield it from both factual and electoral reality for decades to come. And so far, that’s proven to be a solid bet, keeping a party with few substantive policies neck and neck in major races. The problem, again, is that candidates with heads full of pudding, hatred, and conspiracy theories aren’t going to appeal to the public; especially younger Americans who increasingly realize the modern Trump GOP is routinely and violently full of shit.

Filed Under: debates, desantis, disinformation, flood the zone with shit, gop, media, media consolidation, media reform, politics, propaganda, trump

Wyoming ‘Bans’ Electric Cars In Dumb Performative Oil Industry Ass Kissing

from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept

Thu, Jan 19th 2023 01:29pm - Karl Bode

While some states work on how best to phase out traditional gas cars to help mitigate the climate’s steady collapse, Wyoming is busy showcasing how far its head is lodged up the ass of the oil and gas industry.

Last week Wyoming’s GOP-controlled state legislature passed Senate Joint Resolution 4, which calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035:

The bill states that “oil and gas production has long been one of Wyoming’s proud and valued industries” and has generated “countless jobs” and “contributed revenues” to the state. It goes on to say that Wyoming’s “vast stretches of highway, coupled with a lack of electric vehicle charging infrastructure” would make “widespread use of electric vehicles impracticable.”

This being 2023 Republicans, the resolution doesn’t actually fucking do anything beyond trolling electric vehicle supporters and advertising these politicians’ mindless fealty to energy interests. It’s something Wyoming State Senator Senator Brian Boner is quite proud of as he attempts to make something resembling a point of some kind:

“I’m interested in making sure that the solutions that some folks want to the so-called climate crisis are actually practical in real life,” GOP co-sponsor Sen. Brian Boner said, according to Cowboy State Daily. “I just don’t appreciate when other states try to force technology that isn’t ready.”

Boner even acknowledged the resolution’s trolling nature. “One might even say tongue-in-cheek,” Boner said of the resolution, adding, “But obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion.”

Yes, the steady climate catastrophe, whose violent and fatal impact is being seen every day on the news, requires the kind of serious public discussion one only finds through… meaningless political performances whose only function is to annoy others and obstruct progress.

North Carolina engaged in a similar performance lately when it futilely proposed a bill demanding all cities in the state destroy all electric vehicle charging stations state wide. The bill also demanded that any business that offers free charging itemize the cost said chargers impose on patrons, in a weird, clumsy bid to potentially shame them away from embracing electric vehicles.

All told it’s the kind of nonsensical, trolling, corrupt, childish gibberish the modern GOP has become synonymous with. It’s a party that has no policy solutions, but does provide endless zero-calorie drivel that makes finding real solutions to real problems significantly more difficult.

Filed Under: bans, charging stations, electric vehicle, gop, phaseout, senate joint resolution 4, trump, wyoming

NY Times Aptly Illustrates How The AT&T Time Warner Merger Was An Even Bigger Mess Than You Probably Realized

from the nobody-wins,-everybody-loses dept

Mon, Nov 28th 2022 12:06pm - Karl Bode

The AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers were a monumental, historical disaster. AT&T spent $200 billion (including debt) to acquire both companies thinking it would dominate the video and internet ad space. Instead, the company lost 9 million subscribers in nine years, fired 50,000 employees, closed numerous popular brands (including Mad Magazine), and basically stumbled around incompetently for several years before recently spinning off the entire mess for a song.

The New York Times recently published the kind of merger post mortem the media usually can’t be bothered to do. The outlet spoke to dozens of individuals at the companies who detail how AT&T leadership was completely out of its depth, refused to take any advice, and blinded by the kind of hubris developed over a generation of being a government-pampered telecom monopoly.

While the Trump DOJ ultimately sued to stop the deal, it was never actually due to antitrust concerns. It was because a petulant President was mad at CNN for critical media coverage. And it was also because Time Warner repeatedly refused to sell itself to Fox boss Rupert Murdoch, who likely hoped to either kill the deal or nab some divested chunks of the acquired assets.

But the NYT tells an interesting tale of a meeting in which not only did Trump originally praise CNN, but AT&T promised it would fire CNN boss Jeff Zucker if the administration approved the deal:

Mr. Trump kept up his Twitter diatribe against CNN and Mr. Zucker. But on June 22, Mr. Stephenson visited the White House along with other chief executives, and Mr. Trump was surprisingly effusive in his praise for the AT&T chairman, saying publicly that he had done “really a top job.”

Mr. Stephenson’s warm presidential reception was shortly followed by a visit to Time Warner by Larry Solomon, the head of corporate communications for AT&T. Mr. Solomon told Mr. Ginsberg that he was there to give him a “heads up” that “we’re going to fire Jeff Zucker,” Mr. Ginsberg recalled.

AT&T denies that ever happened. Then again, it also tries to claim it didn’t take a total bath on the deal. The New York Times, meanwhile, seems to downplay the persistent indications that the Trump DOJ’s sudden and completely uncharacteristic interest in antitrust issues was not just a lawsuit driven by Trump’s petty anger at CNN, but Rupert Murdoch’s interest in acquiring or at least harming a competitor.

The Trump DOJ ultimately lost the lawsuit due to its sloppy failure to truly illustrate the consolidative harms of the deal (since again, they didn’t actually care about that aspect of it). Calls by ex-DOJ officials for an investigation into the DOJ abusing its power (since again, the lawsuit was mostly about Trump’s ego and helping Rupert Murdoch) went nowhere, as such things tend to do in the U.S.

AT&T’s attempt to pivot from stodgy old telco to modern video advertising juggernaut completely collapsed anyway under the weight of its ego and incompetence, forcing the company to spin off DirecTV and Time Warner in various deals that continue to go badly, just in new incarnations with new names (Time Warner Disney is itself a dumpster fire for the ages).

Don’t feel too badly for AT&T though. Something the NYT doesn’t really mention is how the Trump era in general remained an all time great one for AT&T, which not only got a $42 billion Trump tax cut for doing nothing, it received numerous regulatory favors from the Trump FCC from the gutting of net neutrality and media consolidation rules to the effective lobotomization of the FCC’s consumer protection authority.

The Times does mention how most of the AT&T executives who bungled the disastrous deal received massive cash payouts as “punishment.” But the Times downplays how the megadeal eliminated jobs for more than 50,000 (and counting) employees, and resulted in a generally shittier product for consumers (CNN under Discovery leadership is in the midst of a disastrous bid to shift its coverage from bland and feckless centrism to more right wing authoritarian appeasement and it’s… not going great).

The Times also doesn’t really touch on the fact that mindless consolidation like this happens constantly. Or that U.S. antitrust enforcement is comically broken. Or that the press (including the Times) can routinely be found un-skeptically parroting supposed synergies of such deals pre-merger, helping create the problems they report on. At least we got a post-mortem, which is more than most major press outlets can be bothered to do in a country that treats disastrous, pointless mergers like a national pastime.

Filed Under: antitrust, antitrust reform, competition, consolidation, doj, media, mergers, telecom, trump
Companies: at&t, directv, time warner