TSOT020: Case Study of Coverage (Follow-up on QROT-14)
Sep 17, 2021, 01:52 PM
(Another I thought might be a Quick Rant, but upon finishing kind of HAVE to call it a regular episode, since it was over 30 minutes)
Follow-up on my suspicions that a very newsworthy story originated 9/10/21 about an event that happened earlier that week*, might barely be covered in the official "news" institutions, as of night of 9/16/21.
Quick answer: My suspicions were confirmed.
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1. I review both search results using two search engines, looking both at the "news" results, and at the "all" results.
2. I found many of the area's "media" (papers, TV stations, et cetera,) and go over the tiny amount of coverage I could find there (I did not look for video news by the way, say, on youtube - I figure any of them would record the coverage of their story in some way right on their site) Barely ANY coverage and it is possible NO ONE mentioned the story as an initial breaking story, but instead that in about the THREE mentions across all that media, all were "we'll cover it since the hospital put out a release about it."
And, as usual, any case study about the news undercovering provides at least one great case study in propaganda - we find here that (of course) in one of the "give them cover" stories, they misstate what is the true controversy, so they can use the term "debunk."
3. Review and analyze "all" results from both search engines.
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Timeline:
0:00 : Background - Summary of original story.
1:57 : My suspicions of mass and purposeful undercoverage.
2:49 : Coverage internet search engine results (night of 9/16/21). DuckDuckgo and Google results that show up under their "news" category.
6:43 : Go over the various search results, using duckduckgo's "site:" function (same feature google has), to find results specific to the site you put in the search. The media I found near Wilmington. ABC11, Fox, PBS, WCTI 12, WECT 6, WILM 10, WWAY 3, Wilmington News Journal, Greater Diversity News, Wilmington Insider Info, Encore, Wilmington Biz, 980 WAAV AM, Star News.
12:23 : Review and analysis and commentary of the very few articles that came up.
12:32 : WECT article: Misstates the motivation for the controversy. Statement from hospital includes bald-faced lies.
18:48 WILM 10 article: A non-article, merely mentioning that hospital "debunks" and apparently only referencing that WECT covered.
Second WILM 10 article: Same as previous. A non article, but now changed headline to include the word "debunked" instead of "responds to".
20:54 : Transition to look at "all" results for duckduckgo, and commentary on the HUGE problem of what those results show - that "all" results show basically ZERO "center" or "main" mentions. ONLY "alternate" or "right" or "libertarian" sites covered a news story that scores at 100% for newsworthiness.
24:50 : Who DID bother to cover it, per the "all" search results.
First Duckduckgo. . . .
27:13 : . . . and then google.
28:22: Commentary on those results, and end commentary.
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*(Quick Rant of Truth 14 was about a Doctor at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, who said outrageous things during an internal zoom call, telling her hospital to lie more: To be "more scary," tell them that "if you don't get the vaccine, you know you're gonna die." And potentially to be more deceptive, as she asks how they count "recovered" patients, still in the hospital, with a motivation to use that number as part of the total number of current stuvid-19** patients
**My code word, since we know live in a censoring world. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I do not.
*** ADDENDUM: In podcast I was surprised that duckduckgo had no news results, because I'd seen at least two earlier in the day. I know what those are now - I had mentioned them when I initially tried to record a podcast earlier in the day. It was Vision Times, and Zinder. So across the ENTIRE news universe (to the extent their customized algorithm for individuals at LEAST may not be customized for the news results - and we all see the same thing there), there were THREE sites that show up, BETWEEN google news results and Duckduckgo news search results)
Follow-up on my suspicions that a very newsworthy story originated 9/10/21 about an event that happened earlier that week*, might barely be covered in the official "news" institutions, as of night of 9/16/21.
Quick answer: My suspicions were confirmed.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. I review both search results using two search engines, looking both at the "news" results, and at the "all" results.
2. I found many of the area's "media" (papers, TV stations, et cetera,) and go over the tiny amount of coverage I could find there (I did not look for video news by the way, say, on youtube - I figure any of them would record the coverage of their story in some way right on their site) Barely ANY coverage and it is possible NO ONE mentioned the story as an initial breaking story, but instead that in about the THREE mentions across all that media, all were "we'll cover it since the hospital put out a release about it."
And, as usual, any case study about the news undercovering provides at least one great case study in propaganda - we find here that (of course) in one of the "give them cover" stories, they misstate what is the true controversy, so they can use the term "debunk."
3. Review and analyze "all" results from both search engines.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Timeline:
0:00 : Background - Summary of original story.
1:57 : My suspicions of mass and purposeful undercoverage.
2:49 : Coverage internet search engine results (night of 9/16/21). DuckDuckgo and Google results that show up under their "news" category.
6:43 : Go over the various search results, using duckduckgo's "site:" function (same feature google has), to find results specific to the site you put in the search. The media I found near Wilmington. ABC11, Fox, PBS, WCTI 12, WECT 6, WILM 10, WWAY 3, Wilmington News Journal, Greater Diversity News, Wilmington Insider Info, Encore, Wilmington Biz, 980 WAAV AM, Star News.
12:23 : Review and analysis and commentary of the very few articles that came up.
12:32 : WECT article: Misstates the motivation for the controversy. Statement from hospital includes bald-faced lies.
18:48 WILM 10 article: A non-article, merely mentioning that hospital "debunks" and apparently only referencing that WECT covered.
Second WILM 10 article: Same as previous. A non article, but now changed headline to include the word "debunked" instead of "responds to".
20:54 : Transition to look at "all" results for duckduckgo, and commentary on the HUGE problem of what those results show - that "all" results show basically ZERO "center" or "main" mentions. ONLY "alternate" or "right" or "libertarian" sites covered a news story that scores at 100% for newsworthiness.
24:50 : Who DID bother to cover it, per the "all" search results.
First Duckduckgo. . . .
27:13 : . . . and then google.
28:22: Commentary on those results, and end commentary.
============================================
*(Quick Rant of Truth 14 was about a Doctor at New Hanover Regional Medical Center, who said outrageous things during an internal zoom call, telling her hospital to lie more: To be "more scary," tell them that "if you don't get the vaccine, you know you're gonna die." And potentially to be more deceptive, as she asks how they count "recovered" patients, still in the hospital, with a motivation to use that number as part of the total number of current stuvid-19** patients
**My code word, since we know live in a censoring world. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I do not.
*** ADDENDUM: In podcast I was surprised that duckduckgo had no news results, because I'd seen at least two earlier in the day. I know what those are now - I had mentioned them when I initially tried to record a podcast earlier in the day. It was Vision Times, and Zinder. So across the ENTIRE news universe (to the extent their customized algorithm for individuals at LEAST may not be customized for the news results - and we all see the same thing there), there were THREE sites that show up, BETWEEN google news results and Duckduckgo news search results)