Article of the day, "Why doesn't anyone trust the media?"

Today, November 10.2025, a new column is being introduced on Markham's Slow News called "Article Of The Day." Most days an article about an article will be posted that looks at the various social systems that we all participate in. This first article is a about the media.

 Why doesn’t anyone trust the media? Harpers, November, 2025

Perhaps most telling is the changing relationship between media and political power. There is a palpable sense of surrender in the air. In December, ABC News agreed to pay President Trump $16 million to settle a defamation suit he had filed against the network. CBS’s parent company, Paramount Global, later settled its own Trump lawsuit, also for $16 million, three weeks before securing Federal Communications Commission approval for its merger with Skydance Media. Trump has since filed a host of additional suits against media organizations, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and threatened the broadcast licenses of major networks.

All of this raises pressing questions: In an era of declining trust, industry collapse, and technological disruption, does the media, as we’ve historically understood it, have a future? What essential functions does professional journalism serve that cannot be replaced by other forms of information gathering and dissemination? And why, finally, do Americans view the media with such skepticism?

The article is composed of a panel discussion with four journalists none of whom seem to get the key reasons that the public no longer trusts traditional media. Here are a few reasons not discussed.

First, the rise of autocratic government is based on disinformation and propaganda so that the leaders can shape the truth in a direction favorable to their power grab and domination. There is an intentional and deliberate attempt to discredit truthful, accurate news reporting if the facts undermine their policies and procedures.

Second, under the misguided notion of “fair and balanced” the news media is reluctant to report the truth. The “both sideism” has destroyed the public's trust that there are facts and not just opinions about the facts.

Third, news has been turned over to entertainment interests and what is popular is more important than what is honest. Readers attention and engagement is based on “likes” and not on factual reporting.

Fourth, increasingly, audiences want communications that are cognitively consonant with their belief system rather than cognitively dissonant even if the cognitively dissonant information is true and accurate. Part of this tendency to avoid or dismiss the cognitively dissonant is just human nature and a great deal of it is a failure of our educational systems and culture to encourage curiosity and critical thinking. At the same time that the media is increasingly distrusted, science is under assault.

Having read this article, many more questions arise such as:

1. What will help people become more curious about facts and ideas that stretch their current belief system?

2. How can news media communicate truthful but unpopular ideas in a way that audiences are willing to listen and consider them?

3. How can truthful and honest communication be funded and morally supported if the audience doesn’t want to pay for it?

4. How can truth telling communicators be trained and supported in their difficult work?

Houston, we have a problem." Climate change denial

“Houston, we have a problem.”

11/10/25

On Sunday, June 27, Canada broke its all-time heat record, 113 degrees Fahrenheit, when the temperature reached nearly 116 degrees in Lytton, a community of around 250 residents on the Fraser River, in southern British Columbia. The next day, that record was broken, again in Lytton, when the temperature hit 118 degrees. On Tuesday, it was smashed again, when the temperature in the town soared to 121 degrees.

McKibben, Bill. Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (p. 44). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

The famous phrase from the Apollo 13 movie is “Houston, we have a problem.” The statement is memorable because it is an under statement of the dire situation the astronauts found themselves in. We can now say the same thing as we experience the soaring hot temperatures on our planet in the solar system, Earth.

What do you make of climate change denial? How much does it  jeopardize the well being of the occupants on Mother Earth? How should climate change denial be managed?

Truth and the need to be always right.

 

In the October 13. 2025 issue of Time Magazine it is written 

"...Vice President J.D. Vance appeared on Charlie Kirk's podcast the Monday after the conservative activist was killed, "We are going to go after the NGO network that foments and facilitates and engages in violence," he said, referring to nongovernmental organizations he claimed are left-leaning. (A study of U.S. political valence by the libertarian leaning Cato institute found that right-wing terrorism has cause more deaths than leftist violence both over the past five years sand since 1975." p.15

How important is it for people to be told the truth?

What happens when government officials in authority mislead people to believe social facts that are inaccurate? Is this immoral? If so, how is the harm to be repaired?

The first thing that can be done is the provision of accurate information. This can be distressing for people especially if the facts don't validate current beliefs. This contradiction between facts and beliefs is what social psychologists call "cognitive dissonance."

Cognitive dissonance for most people is distressing and they feel fearful of the truth. Why would people be afraid of the truth? Because they have some sort of vested interest in their inaccurate beliefs. What kind of vested interests are there? It can be as elementary as "saving face." Some people are insecure and have a vested interest in being right sometimes at all costs up to and including death.

Calculator for ACA premium changes

If you and/or anyone you know uses the healthcare marketplace (Affordable Care Act/Obamacare), whether federal or state run, here is a link to a calculator to find out how much more you and/or they will be paying if the program is not extended (this is what the federal government shutdown is over). Please pass this on.

https://www.kff.org/interactive/how-much-more-would-people-pay-in-premiums-if-the-acas-enhanced-subsidies-expired/

Pay to play makes democracy rotten to its core.

 Western analysts use the word corruption to describe these systems, but this can be misleading: here corruption does not describe bureaucrats soliciting bribes for small acts of civil service (though this happens too); it describes the people in charge using the instruments of government in order to amass wealth, but also using their wealth to perpetuate power. This corruption is integral to the system. The system cannot exist without corruption because corruption is its fuel, its social glue, and its instrument of control. Anyone who enters the system becomes complicit in the corruption, which means everyone is always in some way or another outside the law—and therefore punishable.

Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy (p. 47). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Gessen points out that the money to be obtained in politics isn’t exactly corruption because it is a natural, necessary fuel for the old so-called "democratic processes.” It takes huge amounts of money to campaign for Federal and State offices and that money comes from corporate donors and oligarchs who want their politicians elected who will do their bidding.

So it is a system of pay to play. 47 is right when he says the system is rigged. It is rotten to its core. How can this toxic practice be changed if we are to improve our democratic processes if we ever get beyond the current American autocracy?

Help Save The Lift Bridge Book Shop in Brockport, NY

The closing of the Main Street bridge in Brockport, NY has decreased the business at Lift Bridge 30 - 40%. The closing has now dragged into the third year and the Lift Bridge is struggling. Sara, a co-owner, said last week that the store might have to close by the end of the year. Then a  friend, Christina Daniels, started a Go Fund Me campaign to save the Lift Bridge last week and so far it has gathered over $20,000.

Will you help keep the Lift Bridge open? Sarah and John Boncyck need our help.

Go to the Go Help Me website and donate what you can.

Thanks for your consideration and assistance. Donate what you can and then spread the word.

Terrible things are happening outside - Anne Frank

Make no mistake—these are dark times. As Anne Frank wrote, “Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.”

For more click here.

One of the methods of autocratic government is to strike terror in the minds of the population in order to control and subdue it. This is now happening in cities across America from Los Angeles, to Chicago, to Memphis. It is coming to a city near you if you live in a Blue State. The Republicans have stated that Democrats are the enemy, Is this the America we want to live in?

Autocracy: Shitting in our own bed

The Trump campaign ran on disdain: for immigrants, for women, for disabled people, for people of color, for Muslims—for anyone, in other words, who isn’t an able-bodied white straight American-born male—and for the elites who have coddled the Other. Contempt for the government and its work is a component of the disdain for elites, and a rhetorical trope shared by the current crop of the world’s antipolitical leaders, from Vladimir Putin to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. They campaign on voters’ resentment of elites for ruining their lives, and they continue to traffic in this resentment even after they take office—as though someone else, someone sinister and apparently all-powerful, were still in charge, as though they were still insurgents. The very institutions of government—their own government now—are the enemy. As president, Trump went on to denigrate the intelligence services, rage against the Justice Department, and issue humiliating tweets about officials in his own administration.

Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy (pp. 17-18). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

What do citizens do when they elect a chief executive of a government that that chief executive holds in contempt and disdain and takes steps to destroy?

Most Americans don’t comprehend what their government does for them. If life has not been good to them, they have to blame somebody just as people tend to blame their parents for their unhappiness.

When people are unhappy their first instinct is to feel like a victim of forces difficult to identify and so they tend to blame the institutions they were told would take care of them. Like parents, these governmental institutions are not able to meet all the needs of the people they attempt to serve. When there is a disconnect between the person desiring help and the hoped for helper, contempt, disdain, and resentment arise and the wish for retribution and revenge are very powerful feelings which unfortunately all too often get acted out.

Did you ever want to hurt or destroy someone that disappointed you and let you down? Would you side with someone who offered to inflict  harm on the offender? Would you vote to give power to a leader who promised you revenge and retribution? “Lock her up!” Would you vote for protection from further disappointment and perceived attack by building walls? Would you want to destroy the very institutions who have the expertise and competence to help but which frustrated and disappointed you?

The American voter is like a puppy or a kitten shitting in their own bed and now they have to lie in it. Where’s the CNA when you need one to clean you up?

"State of exception" used to justify power grab

 

The Reichstag Fire was used to create a “state of exception,” as Carl Schmitt, Hitler’s favorite legal scholar, called it. In Schmitt’s terms, a state of exception arises when an emergency, a singular event, shakes up the accepted order of things. This is when the sovereign steps forward and institutes new, extralegal rules. The emergency enables a quantum leap: Having amassed enough power to declare a state of exception, the sovereign then, by that declaration, acquires far greater, unchecked power. That is what makes the change irreversible, and the state of exception permanent.

Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy (pp. 10-11). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

47 has declared war on American cities governed by Democrats asserting that they are unsafe, out of control, and in need of the military to restore order. He is declaring a “state of exception” which gives him extraordinary powers to take control of major American cities such as Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Memphis.. To what extent do you agree with this assertion? Could the US military be coming to establish military control over a city near you any time soon?

This declaration of a state of exception to usurp power is a standard play in the autocratic governance playbook

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Autocracy - We got what we voted for.

One of Trump’s three rallying cries on the campaign trail—one of the three apparent components of making America great again—was “Drain the swamp” (the other two were “Lock her up” and “Build that wall”). It may have sounded like a call to battle against corruption, but it was in fact a declaration of war against the American system of government as currently constituted.

Gessen, Masha. Surviving Autocracy (p. 17). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

45 and 47 didn’t campaign to be the chief executive of a democratic government but to change the government from a democracy to an autocracy. 

He promised to destroy the democratic institutions of government because “I alone can fix it.” He promised to eradicate the rule of law for the rule of fiat when he insisted that his political opponent should be locked up. He promised to withdraw the nation from international relationships on the planet Earth by building walls and policies of exclusion to achieve solitary autonomy. The American voters voted not once but twice for this new form of government with all governmental power and authority vested in the unitary of the presidency.

We got what we voted for. How is it working out for us, for you and yours?