Media Meltdown and also Media Bias 101

[LaceyLou]

Let's not forget the Liberty Bell March. 🙂

[CMRivdogs]

2 hours ago, LaceyLou said:

Let's not forget the Liberty Bell March. 🙂

I've done enough Summer Community Band concerts to have this seared into my brain....

Throw in Ride of the Valkyres...(Kill the Wabbit, Kill the Wabbit)

[CMRivdogs]

From last night Colbert Show...

Quote

Stephen Colbert reacted to Paramount's pursuit of WBD last night by saying, "Wow. I gotta say, if my company's got that kind of green, I'm sure they can afford to un-cancel one of their best shows!" You can probably guess what he said next, after the audience whooped in approval. (Here's the YouTube video.)

 

Colbert went on: "Turns out Paramount got a little assist on the cash front. Their bid includes $24 billion from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi wealth funds. And when the dictator of Saudi Arabia gives you billions of dollars, I'm sure there's no catch."

https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/17653777895322019ed781f4f/raw?utm_source=cnn_Reliable+Sources+–+Dec+10%2C+2025&utm_medium=email&bt_ee=0ZCpPwm93MXi0H6g1UfDlE%2FfdxGFpsUXRjJmaCaqfvYoy5xFEsD9Bi5yRlrei1Lt&bt_ts=1765377789536

[RatkoVarda]

 

[gehringer_2]

5 minutes ago, RatkoVarda said:

 

silly premise if you ask me. Who moves anywhere based on who the mayor is?

[romad1]

For those who are looking for the home of the Washington Post talent who fled Bezos' attempt to turn it into a mouthpiece for his own interests.  The Atlantic appears to be where a significant number of them have landed.  Alexandra Petrie whom the haus frau used to read to me all the time chuckling appears to be there now.    

[CMRivdogs]

28 minutes ago, romad1 said:

For those who are looking for the home of the Washington Post talent who fled Bezos' attempt to turn it into a mouthpiece for his own interests.  The Atlantic appears to be where a significant number of them have landed.  Alexandra Petrie whom the haus frau used to read to me all the time chuckling appears to be there now.    

The Atlantic has become one of the few must reads for me

[LaceyLou]

58 minutes ago, romad1 said:

For those who are looking for the home of the Washington Post talent who fled Bezos' attempt to turn it into a mouthpiece for his own interests.  The Atlantic appears to be where a significant number of them have landed.  Alexandra Petrie whom the haus frau used to read to me all the time chuckling appears to be there now.    

Thanks for the tip.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

The Atlantic has become one of the few must reads for me

They have a fantastic daily newsletter chock full of use reads, and a terrific weekly roundup on Sunday.

[Sports_Freak]

On 12/8/2025 at 4:51 PM, chasfh said:

Surely you have heard about the paramount hostile takeover bid to keep Netflix from purchasing Warner Brothers Discovery, and that Trump himself is ready to put his tiny ugly thumb on the scale for paramount.

I subscribing to a TV business newsletter, and I saw this post within it, which I thought was fascinating.

I wouldn't say I am cynical, but I do think of myself as fairly savvy. But I did not have a clear idea of just how much social media traffic is bought, frequently by nefarious forces seeking to, frankly, destroy America as we know it.

Here is an object lesson in that, right here. 

*****

THE DETAILS OF A SECRET CONSERVATIVE MEDIA EFFORT TO SINK THE NETFLIX BID FOR WARNER BROS. STUDIOS AND STREAMING

One advantage of having a substantial readership is that I have readers from every industry and political belief. And I hear from them on a regular basis. My reader emails can top 250-300 a day. More if I am writing something that resonates strongly with some people.

However, those emails also include a lot of tips and that has led to me breaking a number of stories over the past couple of years. And today’s exclusive started with a reader email I received on Friday. It came from someone who is a moderately popular conservative influencer, but also someone who has a strong sense of what he will and won’t for the cause.

He had just received a unsolicited pitch from someone he didn’t know. A bland Gmail address and a name he had never heard before. But the subject of the email got his attention:

 

I initially wasn’t sure if the pitch was legitimate, but he was able to connect me with two other conservative influencers who didn’t want to talk to me at length. But they did confirm they received the pitch and forwarded me their emails, which were identical to the one above. 

None of these influencers wanted to be publicly identified - for obvious reasons. But they are all relatively well-known influencers and it seems unlikely they would concoct some story to cause trouble.

One of the three had responded to the pitch and had received an offer letter and contract back for approval. I’m not going to share that here, because it is filled with personably identifiable information. But this offer could make someone thousands of dollars pretty quickly, which makes me suspect that whomever is doing it is willing to pour resources into the efforts.

I reached out to email address on the pitches and didn’t receive a response.

I’m not going to speculate on who might be behind this or which influencers might have made a deal. Because honestly, it can be hard to determine sometimes if influencers are being bought or just jumping in to ride the engagement train of other accounts. But I will note that I saw a lot of thought-provoking tweets over the weekend on X. And I can’t help suspecting that not all of the opinions being shared by the various conservative influencers and media types were entirely sincere:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What i take from this is MAGA is afraid Bugs Bunny may be woke. 😆😆

[Edman85]

5 hours ago, romad1 said:

For those who are looking for the home of the Washington Post talent who fled Bezos' attempt to turn it into a mouthpiece for his own interests.  The Atlantic appears to be where a significant number of them have landed.  Alexandra Petrie whom the haus frau used to read to me all the time chuckling appears to be there now.    

They also did a giant puff peace on RFK a couple weeks ago that gave me pause on a possible subscription.

[Edman85]

1 hour ago, Sports_Freak said:

What i take from this is MAGA is afraid Bugs Bunny may be woke. 😆😆

If only we could use AI to repurpose Pepe Lepieu episodes into Trump...

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, Sports_Freak said:

What i take from this is MAGA is afraid Bugs Bunny may be woke. 😆😆

I know the Warner Brothers and Sister Yacko, Wacko and Dot are not

I read most of Trump’s postings in the voice of The Brain

[Sports_Freak]

6 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

They also did a giant puff peace on RFK a couple weeks ago that gave me pause on a possible subscription.

I just read about the measles outbreak in South Carolina. And I asked myself, for the 1000th time, what is wrong with those people?

[romad1]

44 minutes ago, Sports_Freak said:

I just read about the measles outbreak in South Carolina. And I asked myself, for the 1000th time, what is wrong with those people?

 

52 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

They also did a giant puff peace on RFK a couple weeks ago that gave me pause on a possible subscription.

Which one of these was it? 

https://www.theatlantic.com/search/?q=rfk+jr

[romad1]

BTW, when I did a search for "RFK JR Puff Piece" i got a bunch of hits on NY Times.  Not sure if that was what you meant Edman.

[Edman85]

11 minutes ago, romad1 said:

BTW, when I did a search for "RFK JR Puff Piece" i got a bunch of hits on NY Times.  Not sure if that was what you meant Edman.

Headed out the door... it was something I passively saw on my timeline and surprised it came from the Atlantic. Might have just been a bad headline. I think it was the Sheerer piece a month or so ago at a glance.

[romad1]

24 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

Headed out the door... it was something I passively saw on my timeline and surprised it came from the Atlantic. Might have just been a bad headline. I think it was the Sheerer piece a month or so ago at a glance.

Didn't mean to invoice your time :--)

I glanced at the Sheerer piece and it does look like what you say.  

[Sports_Freak]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

 

Which one of these was it? 

https://www.theatlantic.com/search/?q=rfk+jr

There's also an outbreak out west. I guess people voted to bring back diseases from the 1950's.

https://apnews.com/article/measles-outbreak-south-carolina-utah-arizona-3bfc561ecc16d8e80175effdae0791d4

[chasfh]

6 hours ago, Edman85 said:

They also did a giant puff peace on RFK a couple weeks ago that gave me pause on a possible subscription.

 I finally let mine lapse earlier this year. It wasn’t even worth the $29 a year I had been getting it for.