This is a topic that gets a lot of play (especially by me), but doesn't really have its own thread so kind of just gets spread around. Seems reasonable to just have a thread to discuss the media.

https://www.richardhanania.com/p/why...onest-and-good

Anyways, I dont really endorse this opinion; but in this article Hanania does make a reasonable argument that acknowledges the leftist MSM's partisan flaws, but also argues it is in its totality a positive, and most certainly better than anything that would fill the vacuum if they weren't around. He does acknowledge when it comes to matters of race, the leftist media does show itself to be completely unhinged and should be treated as such. But this is the exception to the rule.

Definitely something for someone who is inherently very critical and skeptical of the media (such as myself) to think about. Especially the part about thinking what would fill the vacuum if they weren't around.

Media is as corrupt as the political parties it panders to

Are u aiming at msm or msnbc ?
I saw critic from msm toward leftish politician too so I don’t know shrug

Almost a month since the Lahaina wildfires, and we still dont have a clue about the human death toll or any real media investigation into the institutional failures that occurred that lead to this.

It really looks like the media and establishment are conspiring to keep news suppressed as much as possible. I think they are sensitive to how much this is an institutional failure of Democratic governance, and they dont want this to come back to the President or other members of the party leading up to 2024.

Compare this to tragedies that happen in red states, where there is a major coverage of the tragedy and investigative focus on the governance failures that lead to the outcome. And of course the human death toll in red state catastrophes is highlighted at every opportunity instead of being suppressed.

The lack of coverage and the amount of coverup on this fire yes is very strange

"The media" has done a top notch job of corrupting you sir.


Hook line and sinker.

When the goal of the media CNN & MSNBC is to elect Joe Biden and portray Trump voters as evil and the goal of FOX is to elect the GOP candidate and paint Dems as evil the media is corrupt

You may think they have corrupted me just as I may feel they have also corrupted you

So we're linking to the blog of an overt Nazi, cool.

CNN
—
Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for following the deadly fires in Maui, and the state’s governor is urging people to file missing persons reports to aid investigators.

So far, authorities are handling 41 active missing persons cases, Gov. Josh Green said Monday on CNN this morning.

The broader list of missing people compiled from federal and local authorities and Red Cross records stands at 385, down from a peak of about 1,200.


****

Reopening Old Wounds': When 9/11 Remains Are Identified, 20 Years Later. The medical examiner's office is still working painstakingly to identify 9/11 victims. There are 1,106 victims whose remains have not been found.

Of course you're citing an absolute bigot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/u...ndictment.html

So the MSM hasn't given this story very much attention, but in Georgia there is a large group of organized domestic terrorists that have been using intimidation and violence to obstruct a govt construction project. This has been going on awhile, but mostly been ignored by the media except when one of the activists shot a police officer and was killed in return fire. Anyways, the domestic terrorists have been indicted under the RICO act, similar to accused in the Georgia election interference case.

Interestingly, the MSM which very enthusiastically supports when the RICO Act is used against Trump, is not so sympathetic when it is left wing domestic terrorists being charged.

Regardless of how this turns out, I think the takeaway from this is left wing domestic terrorists should only operate moving forward in friendly environs (like Portland) where DAs purely use partisan politics to decide when to pursue the law or not.

Given the recent precedent of extremely long sentences given to the Proud Boys, it will be interesting to see how the establishment responds to a very similar case with a less convenient narrative.

This is at least the second time that Kelhus has cited to the website of Richard Hanania. I didn't bother to figure out who Hanania was the first time around. This time I did.

Hanania apparently has some currency in right wing circles at the moment. He has been cited approvingly by Vivek, Peter Thiel, and various others who move in similar circles. He has published an OpEd in the NYT and he has a written a book on the "origins of wokeness" that is being published by HarperCollins.

In short, he has gained enough mainstream currency that I am not going to delete the link in the OP above.

But everyone should be aware of this guy's history. Here it is:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023...t-message.html

I am highly skeptical of this guy's supposed transformation. I would be embarrassed to cite this person as an intellectual inspiration. I would strongly discourage posters from attempting to inundate the forum with links to this guy's website. Any attempt to cite to this guy's previous "work" on VDARE and Richard Spencer's website will be immediately deleted and the offending poster will be banned.

Whatever his supposed motives or past transgressions, this person analyzes actual data, and makes arguments based off said analysis. He is intentionally provocative which may not be your cup of tea, but in these partisan times of vacuous moral outrage (see 99% of Trolly posts), I hope you can appreciate why someone who focuses on actual data to make arguments might gain some "currency".

FWIW he mainly argues against far right extremism, as most far right positions are not supported by any data.

My objection to the first thing you posted by him was his misuse of data.

He's a bigot. No one should ever link him. The only reason you do that is because you support him. Which is obvious considering your posts.

I've done a little more reading on this guy. He didn't just post on the sites I mentioned previously. He wrote opinion pieces on those sites under a pseudonym. And he didn't limit himself to VDARE and Richard Spencer's site. To the contrary, he seems to have participated in one form or another on a wide range of hate sites.

No one knew about his past until HuffPost published an article exposing Hanania on August 4. A few days later, Hanania published a mea culpa on his substack. (As an aside, I love how these guys always seem to invert the causal chain. In his mea culpa, Hanania essentially says that he was unhappy because he didn't have many friends or romantic prospects and decided to project his unhappiness onto the world by dumping a bunch of racist and misogynistic garbage on the internet. Here is a thought. Maybe you don't have friends or romantic prospects because you are the sort of person that dumps that crap on the internet.)

I didn't know about this back and forth because I don't read HuffPost and I certainly don't read Hanania's substack. Kelhus obviously did when he made this OP, and when he praised what he apparently believes is Hanania's impressive marshalling of data. Make of that what you will.

As for Hanania's future, I doubt he has much of one. The OpEds he published in the Washington Post and the NYT were before he was outed. I assume that the HarperCollins book deal was signed before he was outed. I assume that the shout outs from the Viveks of the world have diminished in the last four weeks, although I haven't confirmed that point. (If you are a high-profile, right-wing tech billionaire, why continue to **** around with this guy when there are plenty of other people who don't have Hanania's baggage who are willing to say the same thing as the current version of Hanania?) If the mainstream right moves on from him, he probably will revert to the explicit racism and misogyny of his past. In fact, he posted the following on X just a few months ago:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/...r-after-expose

Does that sound like a guy who has changed?

Just to be clear, I was not calling for increased moderation.


If anything this thread should be about Dunyain's bad media consumption habits and he got to a place where he's fine sharing the opinions of known bigots.

Kelhus' whole shtick is posting the most racist stuff he thinks he can get away with. When he crosses the line and catches a ban he just make a new account and tries again. It's blatant trolling.

This is tangentially related to media, and an interesting topic. From what I can tell, his main source of income is his sub stack. I doubt being "outed" has been a positive thing for his career, and by the very fact he was posting op-eds in leftist MSM he obviously wanted to be part of that ecosystem, and it would seem those doors would be closed now. But he might still be making good money promoting himself on X and selling books and sub stack subscriptions. I really dont know.

I subscribe to Yglesias's substack, and it is something very reasonable ($10 a month or something in that ballpark) and Yglesias admits he is doing much much better financially through this avenue than his media career. I doubt Hanania has even close to the number of subscribers Yglesias does, but it might still be enough for him to have "a future."

Interestingly, your exposure to him is through leftist MSM hit pieces, so you wouldn't know this (or care). But on Twitter/X he has been EXTREMELY critical of right wing media, much more so than left wing media, so that would be an awkward career pivot if he tried to go that route.

The bottom line is that through Twitter/X, sub stack and of course right wing media, "the right" is constructing its own ecosystem so persons that have been shunned from The Establishment can still have careers. We are seeing something similar in "Hollywood" also. Of course where "the left" still has control is in banking and payment processing, but with people like Elon and Vivek showing interest in this area, even this may be temporary. Very interesting times, if nothing else.

As Hanania himself notes a lot, the main obstacle to this is that so much of the right, highlighted by Trump himself, is just unethical grifters. And if "the right" ever wants to really establish itself as legitimate, it needs a lot less grifting and a lot more competent, ethical people running the ship. At this point it is obvious BLM the organization was more or less just a grift; but the most notable aspect of this is that this is actually rare on the left, whereas on the right this is common, including almost everything Trump related.

I just looked up and AFAICT Hanania charges $5/month for his Substack and has over 29,000 subscribers. So his Substack is grossing over $145K/month. Obviously he isn't getting all of this, but prognostications that he may no longer have a future do not seem to be supported by the available evidence.

And Yglesias has over 112K Substack subscribers and I looked and he charges me $8/month. So assuming this is the mean ( I have no idea how accurate this assumption is) that would mean his sub stack is grossing almost $900K/month. Not too bad considering journalism is supposedly dead.

I have some questions.

Are you suggesting that the recent reporting about his history on all those hate sites is factually inaccurate in some material way?

Do you believe his transformation story is authentic? Do you care whether it is authentic?

Why should I care whether this guy is more or less critical of the right-wing media than he is of left-wing media? Tucker Carlson is plenty critical of Fox and various other right-wing outlets. So is MTG. So is Trump. That doesn't make them good people.

My main point is that his days of being non-radioactive for presidential candidates and mainstream media may be over. But if your point is that he may remain financially viable, then fair enough. In a sane world, he would be financially non-viable as a cultural commentator. But we don't live in a sane world. I could see a universe in which he increasingly embraces what he now purports to have outgrown and makes a living in much the same way the Jared Taylors of the world apparently make a living.

They're talking heads, not journalists. They don't provide value or insight. They seek out clicks for money.

He sure makes loads of money publishing knuckle-dragging white supremacist claptrap. And here you are being a racist propagandist for free!

This means a lot coming from you. Probably the most racist and bigoted posts I've seen on this site are from you