Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/05/27/watch-all-these-local-tv-newsr.html
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This is extremely dangerous for democracy.
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If you don’t like Amazon, stop using it and find another online seller. Personally, I find their service incredibly useful (even before the shut-down but we use it more now that our local shops are closed; I’m glad the locals are starting up again for curbside pick-up).
I do think the montage of reporters synchronized was funny though.
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And I thought things were bad when I worked in the biz. It’s incidents like this that make solid employees leave newsrooms to the the lazy deadwood (like the news directors and executive producers who allowed this to happen).
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It’s dangerous for encouraging independent thought, and definitely “because of consolidation.” With an increase in relaxing or eliminating regulations about ownership of news organizations, we’ll see more of this until all mainstream news comes from a single source. Ownership and control of it would be another source of power to be fought over by our new corporate overlords.
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It’s probably Sinclair Broadcasting doing their thing again. Here’s a link that leads to a discussion of it, along with a John Oliver segment about it:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/john-oliver-slams-cult-sinclair-anti-media-segments-local-news-1098876
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Theresienstadt Amazon Fulfillment, a city for the Jews peons.
Would this be considered the same as a press release?
As you point out:
I agree with @longtimelurker that the montage of them all sticking to the script was amusing in a “well, fuck” way.
I guess, support independent news when you can, but good luck verifying its independence.
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If I ran around telling intelligent people that global corporations were writing news stories, I’d be scoffed at for promoting conspiracy theories.
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I don’t use amazon. Stopped about 3 years ago. It is sometimes hard to find things elsewhere.
This completely misses the point, though. Me, or any other individual, boycotting amazon is purely a gesture; it doesn’t change anything. These are systemic economic problems that need to be addressed through legislation. Any claims that things can be fixed solely through consumer choice is an acceptance of letting wealthy corporations run the world in whatever way best improves their next quarter’s earnings.
This goes for local news as well; this sort of advertisement masquerading as news can’t be fixed just through viewers choosing another station.
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Agreed.
A well regulated market being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of government to enact and enforce regulations shall not be infringed by corporate lobbying or concentration of ownership. Especially media ownership.
That’s the sort of amendment that’s actually needed (as opposed to the other one).
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Yes, absolutely agree. It’s been happening for years, this sort of pushing out advertisement or other kinds of propaganda as news. This is part of why we are where we are. Because we know we can’t trust some of the news media, which is often confirmed by situations like this. And most of us just accept it as a natural part of the world, when it’s very much about shoring up the ideological edges of capitalism.
Concentration of ownership in mass media is partially responsible for this.
Sorry, I don’t find the spreading of disinformation particularly funny. They are pushing for a monopoly, and that’s bad for a number of reasons. Corporations can very much disrupt democratic practices. There is piles of historical evidence for this.
I’d say taking it uncritically from a for-profit corporation (or a political party, or any where that isn’t a vetted news source) is deeply problematic. Amazon is not going to tell us the truth about the exploitation and abuse of their work force and to just uncritically accept that they are is dangerous for those workers.
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Can we just stop parroting this magical idea that somehow the mythical result of change will happen by people supposedly voting with their wallets?
Here’s a better idea- use the fucking law, make shit like this outright illegal, and punish the people doing it.
This tired idea of letting people get away with outright propaganda without consequences of any kind needs to be called out, and dealt with.
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And we still do not grasp the Orwellian influence of our US monopolies? Where is the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt when need him. Trump sure as hell will not be busting any Trusts. Biden either most likely.
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TIL that you don’t need to know grammar & mechanics to write script packages for the “news” industry.
edit: this script is provided as a link in the orginal news story: https://mms.businesswire.com/media/20200521005268/en/793115/1/Amazon+Safety+VNR+script.pdf?download=1
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It’s just that Amazon is killing the other sellers, and many of the other sellers are relying on some of Amazon’s services. So you can’t really avoid it. That’s the problem with Amazon.
It’s not a better idea, it’s the same: we need to do both to actually make a change.
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Zoooom! You missed the point, this really isn’t about Amazon as much as our “news investigators” are simply reading scripts from corporations.
Not funny at all to know people are making important decisions based on a biased PR department.
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I’m never going to see that word again and not think of having to dial into meetings.
Personally, I don’t think they’re anything more than Wish with a different color scheme and better shipping times these days. So much counterfeit crap, terrible listings, god-awful SEO-driven product titles with bad grammar, an ocean of identity-less resellers… it’s basically impossible to feel confident that you’re finding anything genuine anymore.
Recent example from just a couple of weeks ago: I went looking for another pair of Joy-cons for our Nintendo Switch, because the analog stick drift is getting really bad in the ones we’ve had for a while. Every Best Buy, Target, and GameStop in town were sold out, so I resigned myself to looking on Amazon. Even filtering by “new only”, every listing I clicked on said “buy used from $X”, half of them didn’t even have a price, and none of them were sold by Amazon or Nintendo, just rando third parties with absurd upcharges. I gave up.
Luckily, I discovered that one of our LGSes was doing curbside orders and they ended up having exactly two pairs for only marginally over MSRP. So I probably bought the second-to-last set of Joy-cons in eastern Washington, and Bezos still has none of my money.
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I really don’t feel safe buying lens cleaner from them, given the one star reviews. Many of the shops that sell coating safe optical cleaner (and not a counterfeit product containing ammonia, or carcinogens, or god knows what) are closed for COVID-19.
