G/O Media, owner of clickbait sites “news” like Gizmodo, Jezebel and The Root recently came up with a unique response to a strike by its writers: it announced mass layoffs and writers to be replaced by AI Chatbots. To which wags responded: “How will we tell the difference?”
It’s a question which could well be asked of the rest of the mainstream media. If the constant lies and overt bias weren’t enough, then you only need consider some of the pathetic, clickbait tosh being passed off as “journalism” by too much of the mainstream media.
Such as, for instance, this piece purporting to explore the deep, dark meanings behind Elon Musk’s rebrand of Twitter.
Semiotics, the study of signs and symbols, can help us to better understand these associations. The practice is increasingly being used by major brands to leverage those subconscious references.
Well, hats off to whoever finagled that one: they finally found a way to make that Communications degree pay. Having been forced to study a few compulsory Communications units as part of my journalism degree, I am well aware of Semiotics. For those of you blissfully unburdened by such knowledge, let’s just say it’s not much more than using lots of big words to state the bleeding obvious.
For example:
Semiotics analysis tells us X is highly symbolic, triggering intense feelings and emotions.
Well, duh. We’re all well aware of everything from X-marks-the-spot to Planet X, and so on.
But you just know that, when it comes to Elon Musk, the mainstream media will find some way to spin it as dark and threatening.
There are clear patterns around X in our culture signalling physical or moral danger. Case in point, X often turns up in pornography in the form of X-rated content. As something that signals moral boundaries, our minds are alert to it […]
For Musk and Twitter, X aligns with the platform’s move to the dark side following the disabling of safety mechanisms such as content moderation.
This is an obvious lie, of course: Twitter never stopped moderating content. Musk simply forced moderators to apply a modicum of fairness.
The lies get even more obvious, though.
Almost as soon as Musk clinched the troubled deal to buy Twitter, he started to lay off employees charged with fighting misinformation on the platform. He then opened up the blue tick – once the domain of verified, trusted professionals – to anyone with deep enough pockets.
The Age
I’m not even going to bother, here. Some jokes just write themselves, after all.
Given that AI has been well demonstrated to do little but repeat and amplify the biases of those who program it, another wide open field for AI is “fact-checkers”. We know, after all, that “fact-checkers” are really in the business of misleading, and reinforcing the left’s confirmation-biased narratives.
Take this latest effort from RMIT FactLab, who, as I recently reported on The BFD, were secretly raking in tens of thousands from Facebook. Mostly for lying garbage like this:
During a radio interview with 2GB’s Ben Fordham this week, former prime minister Tony Abbott also name-checked the NIAA, citing the “hundreds of people” working for the agency in Canberra as among the reasons a Voice was not needed.
He then claimed that the agency “disburses something like $30 billion a year on various Indigenous programs”.
In fact, it’s unclear whether Abbott was referring specifically to the NIAA, or to Canberra in general. But you just know that “fact checkers” are going to interpret things in any way that will best allow them to bash a conservative.
Mr Abbott’s comments echo similar claims on social media that “dedicated Indigenous bodies” such as the NIAA were collectively “funded to the tune of 30 BILLION PLUS dollars”.
This is true: Canberra disperses around $30 billion a year to Aboriginal Australians. But, watch how the ABC spins it:
However, in a statement to CheckMate, a spokesman for the NIAA said it “has never administered funding of $30 billion per annum”.
But nobody ever said it did, as we’ve seen.
The spin quickly gets worse.
As for government funding more broadly, CheckMate was unable to find any reports or data dealing directly with total spending on “dedicated Indigenous bodies”.
Rather, the $30 billion figure appears to have come from the Productivity Commission’s most recent Indigenous Expenditure Report, published in 2017, which provides a breakdown of total “direct expenditure” on First Nations Australians.
ABC Australia
So, in two sentences, they managed to completely contradict themselves. Having asserted that there are no reports or data, they then name a specific report and its data. A report which also openly states that Canberra spends twice as much, per person, on Aboriginal Australians, as any other Australians.
The least we could say for an AI Chatbot is that it doesn’t knowingly lie like this. It only obeys the programs punched into it.
Who punches the programs in the human robots of the mainstream media?
