Echo Chamber/CEC

maybe this is not much different than escalator effect, but has a couple other elements.est 4/17?may need subcat for RW blogsphere

see CET

conservative entertainment complex?

=<div></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/right-wing-media-outlets-are-booming-in-the-trump-era-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/right-wing-media-outlets-are-booming-in-the-trump-era-report/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Right-wing media outlets are booming in the Trump era: report</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Alex Henderson August 26, 2019</div><div>
</div><div>Right-wing media outlets have traditionally experienced their biggest growth when a Democrat was in the White House. Many far-right outlets knew how to turn fear-mongering over President Bill Clinton in the 1990s or President Barack Obama in the late 2000s/early 2010s into major advertising revenue. But in a report for Axios, Sara Fischer explains that some right-wing outlets have been enjoying substantial growth under a Republican president: Donald Trump.</div><div>
</div><div>Citing a Columbia Journalism Review analysis of right-wing websites using Comscore data, Fischer reports that RedState, the Washington Times and the Washington Examiner are among the outlets that have been thriving during the Trump era. Those sites, Fischer notes, “are experiencing major growth by widening their coverage. Their goal is to cover whatever is capturing the world’s attention that day, from human interest stories to trending entertainment developments.”</div><div>
</div><div>Fischer notes that although the right-wing Weekly Standard folded in late 2018, other websites on the right continue to “rank high” in terms of “engagement on Facebook” — and Fox News, according to Fischer, remains “the #1 news site on Facebook” in 2019 “in terms of reader engagement,” according to the analytics company Newswhip.</div><div>
</div><div>Podcasts that have been thriving in the Trump era, Fischer reports, include “The Joe Rogan Experience” and “The Ben Shapiro Show.” Shapiro, she points out, has “built a megabrand aimed at targeting younger conservatives.”</div><div>
</div><div>Fischer stresses, however, that although “conservative media remains strong across most major media platforms,” some “left-leaning outlets” — including HuffPost — “rank highly” in the Trump era. But Trump’s presidency and the 2020 election, she writes, continue to benefit right-wing media.</div><div>
</div><div>“Typically, the opposition party has a media explosion in response to whichever political group is in power,” Fischer reports. “But the economic stress of the media industry, combined with the Trump-driven conservative strategy of broad messaging, has upended that dynamic.”</div></div><div>
</div><div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-are-poor-whites-more-depressed-and-pessimistic-poor-african-americans" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-are-poor-whites-more-depressed-and-pessimistic-poor-african-americans</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AN alex anderson</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Carol Graham appeared on Charles Ellison’s “Reality Check” program on WURD AM/FM (a liberal/progressive African-American talk radio station in Philadelphia) and discussed the emotional differences between poor blacks and poor whites. It was a fascinating conservation: according to Graham’s research, poor African-Americans in the United States are, on the whole, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-are-black-poor-americans-more-optimistic-than-white-ones/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">more optimistic</a> than poor whites—who Graham described to Ellison as being much more likely to fall into despair. As worried as the African-American community is by the Trump Administration and its horrible policies, Graham finds poor whites to be in a much worse state emotionally and are decidedly more pessimistic.WURD callers, mostly African-Americans living in Philadelphia, offered different views on Graham’s findings. Some asserted that formerly middle-class whites who fell into poverty during the Great Recession were ill-equipped, emotionally, to handle the types of economic struggles African-Americans have been facing all these years. But another explanation for Graham’s findings is that poor whites—whether they became the neo-poor during the Great Recession or were poor long before that—are much more likely to have been thoroughly indoctrinated into right-wing Republican ideology, especially in Republican-dominated areas of the U.S. And as a result, they feel a certain self-hatred and blame themselves for their economic misfortunes in a way that poor African-Americans don’t. Poor whites (especially the ones based in rural areas or small towns) and poor African-Americans often live in very different worlds—and everything from the media outlets they embrace to the churches they attend to the music they listen to is likely to affect whether they view the poor as morally deficient or as people who have been seriously screwed over.As much as right-wingers like to whine about the mainstream media having a liberal bias—which, for the most part, it doesn’t—the fact is that right-wing media is vast, from Fox News to white AM talk radio to Breitbart, Townhall, the Weekly Standard and countless other high-traffic wingnut websites. And the right-wing media has invested considerable time and energy in teaching that the poor are useless freeloaders living off the sweat, hard work and innovation of the rich (who Rush Limbaugh calls “the achievers”). Rural whites who have been bombarded with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/09/08/how_welfare_restrictions_demonize_the_poor_partner/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">decades of poor-bashing</a> from Fox News and white talk radio are bound to take that message to heart and view themselves as moral failures if they are not doing well financially.  The overall message at an African-American talk radio station like WURD is totally different from what one hears on Limbaugh’s show. From the local programming that dominates the station to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s syndicated program, “Keeping It Real,” Donald Trump’s presidency and the Republican Party are painted in a consistently negative light on WURD—and the poor are not painted as parasites or leeches by any means, but as people who have been screwed over by crony capitalism and a rigged game. While WURD callers often sound angry and frustrated over the political climate in the Trump era, the anger doesn’t sound like self-hatred or self-blame. Sharpton and Ellison will encourage education, self-improvement and job training, but in a way that uplifts rather demonizes or belittles the poor.Christianity comes in wildly different forms in the U.S., where white fundamentalist megachurches often have a very different view of economics than African Methodist Episcopal (AME) denominations. The Christian Right, white megachurches and fundamentalist Pentecostals typically embrace the so-called “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/15/how-the-prosperity-gospel-explains-donald-trumps-popularity-with-christian-voters/?utm_term=.f9ef4d932e98" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">prosperity gospel,</a>” which teaches that the rich are blessed with affluence because of their moral superiority and that the poor are poor because of their immoral, sinful ways. But in black AME churches, one often hears that it is a Christian’s duty to feed the poor and help the homeless—and one is more likely to hear Jesus Christ quoted as saying, “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.”In AME churches, the burden of proof is usually on the rich rather than the poor. So, if an African-American in an AME congregation graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school or law school and has a six-figure income, that’s all well and good—but they’re still encouraged to roll up their sleeves and do some volunteer work in a homeless shelter because that’s their duty as a Christian. The prosperity gospel is viewed as wrong-headed and unchristian in many black AME congregations.Liberal AME pastors view Jesus Christ as an advocate for the poor and the downtrodden. To right-wing white megachurches, Jesus hates the poor and spits in their faces.Music is another way in which poor whites and poor blacks can receive radically different messages. The fact that Kanye West said some <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/politics/kanye-west-donald-trump-twitter/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">favorable things about President Trump</a> earlier this year was controversial in the hip-hop community, where Immortal Technique, Public Enemy, Ice-T, KRS-1, Paris, N.W.A, Ice Cube and countless other rappers have been known for their left-of-center views. But modern country-rock is full of right-wing activists who think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin represents “the real America.” The Dixie Chicks became <a href="https://theboot.com/natalie-maines-dixie-chicks-controversy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">pariahs in the country music community</a> after Natalie Maines criticized President George W. Bush and the Iraq War in 2003; Maines found out the hard way that being openly liberal can seriously damage one’s career in country music.The message poor blacks are receiving is that poverty is the result of injustice and the failures of crony capitalism. The message many poor whites are receiving is that if you’re poor, you’re a loser and a parasite.  Of course, Jay-Z, Chance the Rapper and other hip-hop stars attract racially diverse audiences and have plenty of white fans. And as many liberals and progressives as there have been in hip-hop, conservative rappers are not nonexistent. But on the whole, the poor receive a lot more emotional support in hip-hop than they do in modern country music. And even though hip-hop has plenty of imagery of bling and Benzes while modern country music likes to portray itself as music of the common man, hip-hop—at the end of the day—tends to view the poor in a much more compassionate and favorable light.With so many poor whites being demonized whether they’re turning on Fox News, going to a megachurch or hearing their favorite country-rock stars urging them to vote Republican and support President Trump’s agenda, it’s no wonder that so many of them have fallen into despair, hopelessness and self-hatred.</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div>4/17=<div>echo /escalator 2 is age of trump</div><div>
</div><div>layers/scales:</div><div>
</div><div>1) CEC Conservative Entertainment Complex: fox news of course but also reality TV, wrestling, even moving pict inst "documentaries" eg duck dynasty guy; give the lie to Liberal Media (tho they just claim puny counter-wt).</div><div>
</div><div>2) Echo chamber; this refers to earlier and now seemingly quaint constellation of WSJ, Forbes, Fox maybe Drudge.</div><div>
</div><div>3)  Escalator Effect: refers to low level no filter areas of vulnerability that allow BS to work its way up the food chain to mainstream legit media.  Thus "punked"</div><div>
</div><div>see Breitbart, fake news, bots, conspiracy theory
<div>
</div><div>=</div></div><a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.fyovdvW932#.hqPXYXMjLo" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Buzzfeed News</a> analysis found that the top 20 fake political news stories in circulation during the election got more clicks, views, shares and reactions on Facebook than the top 20 real news stories. The vast majority of those fake stories—all but three—were “overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton,” meaning they pinged around the conservative webosphere, where they were accepted without question by millions and then passed to the next gullible consumer.Paul Horner, among the most prolific and successful fake news writers, recently told the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Washington Post</a> that Trump voters and other “right-wing Republicans” were almost single-handedly responsible for the $10,000 he pulls in every month, because they “post everything, believe anything,” and continue to share fake news even when they find out it isn't true. That might explain why so many fake news stories seem specially tailored for the conservative news reader.One of Horner’s most popular stories was a fabricated interview with a made-up person who said he’d been paid to protest Trump ahead of the election. During the campaign, multiple members of <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Trump’s team</a> retweeted the story, even though many sources pointed out it wasn't true. The ludicrous idea that anti-Trump demonstrators are each paid thousands of dollars by billionaire George Soros—who plays a starring role in pretty much every right-wing conspiracy—has now become conservative gospel.Eric Tucker, a marketer in Austin, Texas, was probably very familiar with this rumor when he recently sent an erroneous tweet that launched a viral right-wing story. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=NovHighMC&mcdt=2016-11&subid=NovHighMC&ad-keywords=AudDevGate&r=0" style="text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">New York Times</a> decided to examine how Tucker's tweet became a major topic of conservative discussion, following its online travels step by step. On the evening of November 9, just as protests against President-elect Trump were erupting all over the country, Tucker tweeted the photo and message below to his tiny group of 40 followers. ...<a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news">http://www.alternet.org/media/how-misinformed-tweet-was-manufactured-major-right-wing-news</a> <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.fyovdvW932#.hqPXYXMjLo" style="text-decoration: none;">Buzzfeed News</a> analysis found that the top 20 fake political news stories in circulation during the election got more clicks, views, shares and reactions on Facebook than the top 20 real news stories. The vast majority of those fake stories—all but three—were “overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary Clinton,” meaning they pinged around the conservative webosphere, where they were accepted without question by millions and then passed to the next gullible consumer.Paul Horner, among the most prolific and successful fake news writers, recently told the <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none;">Washington Post</a> that Trump voters and other “right-wing Republicans” were almost single-handedly responsible for the $10,000 he pulls in every month, because they “post everything, believe anything,” and continue to share fake news even when they find out it isn't true. That might explain why so many fake news stories seem specially tailored for the conservative news reader.One of Horner’s most popular stories was a fabricated interview with a made-up person who said he’d been paid to protest Trump ahead of the election. During the campaign, multiple members of <a href="http://www.alternet.org/media/fake-news-writer-feels-guilty-helping-put-trump-white-house" style="text-decoration: none;">Trump’s team</a> retweeted the story, even though many sources pointed out it wasn't true. The ludicrous idea that anti-Trump demonstrators are each paid thousands of dollars by billionaire George Soros—who plays a starring role in pretty much every right-wing conspiracy—has now become conservative gospel.Eric Tucker, a marketer in Austin, Texas, was probably very familiar with this rumor when he recently sent an erroneous tweet that launched a viral right-wing story.The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html?mc=aud_dev&mcid=fb-nytimes&mccr=NovHighMC&mcdt=2016-11&subid=NovHighMC&ad-keywords=AudDevGate&r=0" style="text-decoration: none;">New York Times</a> decided to examine how Tucker's tweet became a major topic of conservative discussion, following its online travels step by step. On the evening of November 9, just as protests against President-elect Trump were erupting all over the country, Tucker tweeted the photo and message below to his tiny group of 40followers. <div alt="" class="media-image" height="447" width="480" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[img]</div>According to the Times, Tucker heard about anti-Trump demonstrations in Austin hours after he saw the buses in the photo, and for reasons that aren’t entirely clear (except that if you look for boogeymen everywhere you will find them), assumed a connection between the two. The Times confirmed that Tucker’s photo actually features buses booked for employees of Tableau Software, which was having a conference in the city. (Tucker told the Times he did a search for nearby conferences but didn’t find anything.) Roughly four hours after the original tweet went out, it ended up <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/5c6ag1/breaking_they_found_the_buses_dozens_lined_up/" style="text-decoration: none;">on Reddit</a>. “BREAKING: They found the buses!” the header reads. “Dozens lined up just blocks away from the Austin protests.” The thread of comments that follow indicate subreddits full of Trump supporters who, riding high on an election victory, are ecstatic to have a new conspiracy they can hang on the left.“Alex Jones is based in Austin,” one commenter declares. “Let him know, and his crew can check it out.”That’s followed by a lot of wishing the worst on Soros, complaints about “cucks,” suggestions that James O’Keefe get involved, and a lot of assumptions rooted in racism and paranoia. “Busing in violent mobs? Please tell me how this isn't inciting treason,” one person demands. This inexplicably devolves into a conversation about Obamaphones.By the morning of November 10, the story appeared on right-wing message board Free Republic, where a user linked back to the original tweet. Here’s the point at which things quickly build momentum, picking up the pace across right-wing echo chambers. According to the Times, that same day, “Facebook pages like Robertson Family Values, which is named for but not affiliated with the stars of ‘Duck Dynasty,’ and Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020, linked to the Free Republic discussion.” A Times screengrab of a Free Republican Facebook post repeating the Reddit message shows 307,616 shares. The paper also cites 5,000 shares of each of the aforementioned blog posts.By now, the story had trickled upward to local news outlets. When the Austin-based affiliate for Fox called Coach USA North America bus company to get more information, they were told by spokesperson Sean Hughes that the company wasn’t involved in any protests. Hughes even sent the station a <a href="http://www.fox5ny.com/news/216900687-story" style="text-decoration: none;">statement clarifying</a> that buses were in town "for a conference” and that “at no point were Coach USA buses involved in the Austin protests." The television station’s website, now empty of most of the content that appeared there, still features photos of the buses taken by Tucker, with a caption that poses this leading question: “Were tens of thousands of protesters across the U.S. paid to walk the streets, hold signs, and chant anti-Trump sayings?”That evening, Gateway Pundit, a major conservative blog, posted a story with the headline, “Figures. Anti-Trump Protesters Were Bussed in to Austin #FakeProtests.” They used Tucker’s original pictures, and according to the Times, linked the nonexistent busloads of fake protesters to “Soros money.” Three hours later, President-elect Trump or someone on his team took to social media <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/796900183955095552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" style="text-decoration: none;">to tweet</a> about the fake story to his 16 million followers.“Just had a very open and successful presidential election,” the message reads. “Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!”As of this writing, the tweet has more than 71,000 retweets and 240,000 likes.<div class="in_content_ad_container ad_13" style="width: 300px; height: 250px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); float: left; margin: 0px 15px 15px 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div id="div-gpt-ad-1420251685282-1" data-google-query-id="CNm1-YvAxNACFUIGgQodYvQMMw" style="width: 300px; height: 250px;"><div id="google_ads_iframe_/1010624/New_AlterNet_300x250_STORY_EMBED_2_0container" style="border: 0pt none; display: inline-block; width: 300px; height: 250px;"></div></div></div><div alt="" class="media-image" height="258" width="480" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><img alt="" class="media-image" height="258" width="480" typeof="foaf:Image" src="http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/screen_shot_2016-11-23_at_4.22.48_pm.png" style="border: none;" /></div>On November 11, a spokesperson for Tableau, the tech company that rented the buses for its conference attendees, sent a statement to the Austin American-Statesman. The newspaper, in turn, published <a href="http://austin.blog.statesman.com/2016/11/11/anti-trump-protesters-in-austin-not-bused-in-contrary-to-twitter-verse/" style="text-decoration: none;">an article</a> debunking Tucker’s original tweet and all of the stories that followed. Included was an interview with Eric Tucker, who praised Alex Jones and stated, “I think that it is necessary for us to risk sometimes being wrong to help develop moving the dialogue forward.”Later in the day, according to the Times, Tucker sent a tweet that acknowledged the possibility his first suggestion may have been “flat wrong.” There was also a <a href="http://www.snopes.com/anti-trump-protesters-bused-into-austin/" style="text-decoration: none;">Snopes article</a> declaring the rumor false. Instead of stopping the fake news dead in its tracks, the case essentially turned into proof that "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," as the old saying goes. Also, the internet loves a lie that supports its political agenda. According to the Times, “Mr. Tucker’s initial tweet continued to generate thousands of shares on Facebook through Free Republic and pages like Right Wing News and Joe the Plumber.”On the night of November 11, Tucker put up the tweet below, which shows his original message updated to carry a bright red “FALSE” across it. The corrected tweet, as of this writing, has a paltry 60 retweets and 66 likes. He told the Times that moving forward, "I can assure you I’m going to try my best to be balanced with the facts and be very clear about what is opinion and what is not." He also said that knowing what he knows now, he “might have still tweeted it but very differently. I think it goes without saying I would have tried to make a more objective statement.”The same night, Tucker finally trashed the tweet that started it all. While that’s been scrubbed from social media, its impact isn’t going anywhere. Neither, coincidentally, is President-elect Donald Trump. ==

Media consolidation has wrecked journalism by cutting its funding and forcing survivors to increase ratings.  In addition, the same content is leveraged over multiple media and even within the same media, so two problems:  it gets echoed/corroborated (eg check Rush on WSJ but both Fox?)

2nd, it's possible to filter ypur info merely by the news source you select. Conservapedia

kjh book

----go 2013Appendix I: Climate denial’s “continental army”“There’s really only about 25 of us doing this. A core group of skeptics. It’s a ragtag bunch, very Continental Army.” — Steve Milloy talking to Popular Science, June, 2012.
Steve The Junkman Milloy, arguably one of the very first global warming deniers, first shot to fame through his challenges to the links between tobacco science and health problems when he was paid by Phillip Morris to direct the front group it set up in 1997 to defend the science of second hand smoke: The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC). He then turned to denial of climate change, and has been at the heart of that campaign ever since.Milloy has claimed the campaign is driven by a small group of about 25 people. So who might this “Continental Army” of about 25 people be? We’ve found 31. Of course there are more who have come and gone, but this gives a fairly comprehensive picture.Individuals associated with think tanks
The Echo ChamberAlong with the think tanks pushing climate denial, there’s a large “echo chamber” in the blogosphere, largely led by a small band of bloggers. They have a larger echo chamber in the form of conservative media such as Fox News, Rush Limbaugh et al.Anthony Watts: Wattsupwiththat.comMarc Morano climatedepot.comSteve McIntyre ClimateAuditJames Delingpole, The Daily Telegraph (UK)Steve Milloy JunkScience.comAndrew Bolt Australian Murdoch columnistthis town: BO remarks on ec. comedy at corresp dinner lows him to tell truth (25 parties) [same time as bp gulf spill)

<a href="http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-09-the-rights-climate-denialism-is-part-of-something-much-larger">http://www.grist.org/article/2010-09-09-the-rights-climate-denialism-is-part-of-something-much-larger</a>