Propaganda Files: Recap

This will be a quick review and summary of what I learned from the first three pieces under the "Propaganda Files" lens. In order, these were Neil Baron's "Legal Culpability" piece in Newsweek, the Dean Obeidallah "Aaron Rodgers" piece for CNN, and the Father Martin "How Do You Respond?" essay for the New York Times.

All were opinion pieces vetted by Newsweek, CNN, and the New York Times, respectively. As such, fact-checking and editorial oversight were the responsibility of these three media titans, while direct responsibility for the pieces could be laid at the authors' feet. 

I'm an analytic plodder. The worst writer employed by any of these three entities is a far better writer than me. Any editor in their employ is a far better editor than me. Frankly, that is a large part of what bothers me. The misdirection and spin, sometimes edging into the realm of misinformation, should have been evident to any editor reviewing these articles.

What We've Learned

I'll be returning to Obeidallah's Aaron Rodgers piece for "Part Two" later this week to connect some big dots. For now, what we've seen and, more importantly, not seen from these three published opinions include the following:

Missing

1) No mention of viral loads at all. Viral loads of infected vaccinated compared to viral loads of infected unvaccinated is important.

2) No mention, ever, of estimated R-values, which would compare vaccinated transmissibility with the transmissibility of the unvaccinated.

3) Very little mention of the Biden administration's Covid death toll, which undercuts the vaccine effectiveness narrative.

4) No discussion of vaccine efficacy for Delta and Omicron, and especially no comparison of vaccine efficacy for the original strain versus the new variants. No comparisons of Covid vaccines' efficacy to previous normal flu vaccines' efficacy.

I suppose that if you're going to pitch vaccination as a cure-all, these topics need to remain unstated and undiscussed.

Emphases

What gets emphasized are very specific statistics. These stats are presented with little discussion, as if the stats themselves provide a self-evident story.

1) Despite no viral load or R-value discussions, the stats that get repeated are the hospitalization and death rates for unvaccinated versus vaccinated. The tone and fear factor are reminiscent of the old "This is your brain on drugs" advertisements. The death rates for unvaccinated are much, much higher, and people need to be aware of them. However, all of the summaries I have read addressing the increased risk for the unvaccinated fail to frame the death rates in any kind of overall context. 

For example, as the U.S. approaches a million Covid deaths, if we assume an adult population of roughly 260 million, the actual chances of dying of Covid have been less than .4%. That means, of course, that you have had more than a 99.6% chance of NOT dying of Covid. I say this not to make any particular point but to provide context, regardless of where the context takes anyone's decision-making. 

In a similar vein, the case fatality ratio in the United States has been 1.2%, and this is a recent (thus presumably accurate) number from Johns Hopkins. This 1.2% represents a blend of vaccinated and unvaccinated dying from Covid. Obviously, being vaccinated now reduces this by a large factor, perhaps knocking down fatality likelihood to under a tenth of a percent. The question for individuals is whether the difference between under a tenth of a percent chance of dying and, say, a two percent chance of dying (assuming, as Dr. Fauci has said, that everyone will eventually be infected) is something that should be legislated. If you're not legislating tobacco products or morbid obesity with regard to mortality percentages, should the government be legislating vaccines for Covid? Why are some mortality risks treated differently than others? 

If you're giving people statistics to make decisions, give them all of the statistics. The job of the federal government and national media is not to cherry pick what is presented for "the public good." The job is to present the data, unvarnished and unspun, to the public. If people are innumerate or simply distrustful of government, spinning the narrative and omitting stats is still not the job of government or media.

2) Another emphasis features (perhaps dated) stats, varying quite a bit, that the unvaccinated are 4.5 times to 10 times more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. These are interesting statistics if the modest vaccine efficacy versus new variants is to be believed. It's hard to reconcile the (usually unstated) modest vaccine efficacy with the high rate of infection among the unvaccinated. What's strongly suggested by the stats (but not the authors we've examined) is that the correlation must be largely due to behavioral differences or varying laws. If the unvaccinated are clustered in states with minimal masking, social distancing, and lockdown rules, then of course the unvaccinated are more likely to be infected, and by a wide margin. The difference can likely be due more to behavioral differences and location laws than to actual vaccination efficacy in preventing infection. Need it be said? Correlation does not equal causation. In this case, because the current vaccines do have some ability to prevent infection, there is a cause-effect between vaccination and not getting infected in the short term, but nowhere near the disparity being presented. And with Dr. Fauci stating on January 12 that he expects almost every American to get Covid, the role of vaccines in preventing infection can be viewed as quite limited in the long term.

What's Implied

It's what's implied in these essays, and implied by much American institutional Covid public relations, that is the most bothersome, manipulative element of these influence communications. Writers and American institutions are relying on implication to convince people how to behave because the stats themselves, honestly presented in context, aren't going to get the job done.

1) If a writer states infection rates for vaccinated as compared to unvaccinated, and then doesn't even mention correlational variables, he is implying that direct cause-and-effect is all that is in play. Why skip the possible correlational variables? It's misleading.

2) If a writer bundles not masking and being unvaccinated together so as to be able to state that "they" are "dangerous to others," that is purposeful. It is misleading because with these current vaccines and variants, the unvaccinated, once infected, are no more superspreaders than the vaccinated. Bundling "not masking" and "being unvaccinated" as a "they" is misleading. The "they" in this case are two completely different things. Labeling them as "they" is propaganda. 

3) If a writer bundles the argument that "unvaccinated are not superspreaders" with the separate argument "not a pandemic of the nonvaccinated" so as to employ a specific study as a debunking tool, that is manipulative. When the study in question does not actually debunk the "not superspreader" argument, but the author doesn't point that out, he is being purposefully misleading. It is propaganda.

None of these writing decisions are accidental. They are planned and quite carefully executed, a kind of Don King "trickeration" with the goal of making public some statistics, masking others, and having   particular effects on audiences.

Purposeful Propaganda

When phrases are bundled or unbundled in service of specific hoped-for effects, that is purposeful writing. It's writing that emphasizes the writer's end (influencing the audience) over what should be the writer's means (using objective facts to share the truth as the writer knows it).

When writers employ these strategies with a scripted end in mind, this is propaganda. When editors see these obvious manipulations and allow them in service of a smooth, homogeneous narrative, this is also propaganda. 

We are awash in it. It's occurring at the highest levels of American writing and at the most experienced, polished levels of editing. 

Bob Dietz

February 6, 2022

Propaganda Files: How Do You Respond?

The title of the piece is "How Do You Respond When an Anti-Vaxxer Dies of Covid?" James Martin, a Jesuit priest, is the author, and the article was published January 30 by the New York Times. This will be a brief and focused analysis of Father Martin's piece. His essay attempts to do good and addresses what he feels are stressful questions and emotions all too common to the pandemic.

I have issues with certain aspects of Father Martin's essay. While I don't question the good faith of this man of faith, I feel that his informational inclusions and exclusions follow many of the patterns of the previous pieces listed in "The Propaganda Files." My first three critiques have now featured analyses of opinion pieces from Newsweek, CNN, and the New York Times. All three have access to the best writers and editors on the planet. Yet I see problematic writing and editing patterns that scream groupthink.

Headlines often set the framework for these patterns, and I have issues with Father Martin's title. The interesting thing about titles is that they are usually suggested or imposed from above. That is, the writer often doesn't choose the title. To the extent that a title establishes expectations not really representative of the piece, or to the extent that the title misinforms, those effects are often purposefully massaged into place from above.

Precise Language

I think that the importance of using language with precision has been overlooked during this pandemic. When words come to represent much more than what they actually mean, we have entered the arena of influence communication and propaganda.

I'm going to quote the beginning of the seventh paragraph of this piece, then examine it. The paragraph in question starts, "The welter of strong feelings can be disorienting:  We see someone resisting vaccines or masking (which frustrates us); thus endangering others (which angers us); perhaps even endangering ourselves (which frightens us); and then dying -- which should sadden us but, some of us are horrified to discover, doesn't."

Father Martin's presumed good intentions aside, this paragraph is laced with misinformation. Can you spot it? It's obvious, but American culture's red/blue auto-dichotomization has trained us to miss it. 

The problem is simply this. The author labels two very different things together as if they were two sides of the same coin. It's because Americans see and experience almost all aspects of the pandemic through the lens of us/them politics that these things get categorized together. Political meanings provide overwhelming labels, neat categories that have nothing to do with reality.

Resisting vaccines is one thing. Resisting masking is something entirely different. Vaccines carry a real element of both immediate self-risk and long-term currently unknowable self-risk. People's various biological idiosyncrasies can elevate vaccines into the realm of significant self-risk. Masking, however, has no such self-risk attached. Masking protects self and others with no biological risk, known or unknown. Taking vaccines entails measurable risk, even if the culture prefers to not report specifics, and taking vaccines has an unknown long-term risk component, however small. 

As such, wearing masks and taking vaccines are two disparate behaviors. There's not much suggesting they should be tied at the hip, yet here they are, presented by the author as if they are two atoms of the same element.

With Delta and Omicron viral loads, infected vaccinated spread the disease as effectively as infected unvaccinated. This does not get repeated very often by major news networks. With these current variants, the infected unvaccinated are no more "endangering others" or "endangering ourselves" than infected vaccinated are "endangering others" or "endangering ourselves." Why does the author not state this? Is he unaware? Does it make for a better narrative if he ignores this?

If I try to answer the whys of what the author chooses to not mention, I begin with a couple simple, minimally conspiratorial ideas. I don't really think these are the crux of the problem, but I'll start here anyway. First, perhaps cognitive dissonance makes it easier to label people into discrete good and bad categories -- the responsible and caring versus the irresponsible and uncaring. Maybe it's easier for people to stereotype and process fewer variables during this time of high stress and social rules outside the experience of most Americans.

Or perhaps it's a variation of this, an inability to tolerate ambiguity. Categorize a bunch of behaviors as appropriate because they somehow "go together" even if they're very different. Reduce variables and processing of information. Condense decision-making into black/white reflexes. It makes life easier.

Or Maybe It's Propaganda

Here's what frightens me. Father Martin may have tied resisting masking and resisting vaccines together because he's aware that resisting masking "endangers others," and he's aware that the resisting of vaccines does not do that against current variants. Resisting vaccines puts the resistor at increased risk. Someone resisting vaccines with the current variants is not, once they are infected, a greater risk to others or us than a vaccine lover. 

Perhaps Father Martin or the New York Times editors understood that for the seventh paragraph to pass a fact check, "resisting vaccines or masking" had to include the "or masking." If you extract the "or masking," the paragraph is pure speculation and arguably false.

I would, in normal times, attribute this phrasing to an accident of editing. But really, in writing, there are very few accidents. And I am running into this kind of subtle manipulation quite often these days. Things are implied that are not true, but they make particular Covid-19 narratives hum, and editors go with them.

Back to the Title

Curling back to the title's use of the word "Anti-Vaxxer," I wonder why "Anti-Vaxxer" has been chosen as the word to cover (1) not masking, (2) not social distancing, and (3) not getting vaccinated, which are three very disparate behaviors. Father Martin and the New York Times editors also had a word choice to make regarding "Anti-Vaxxer" in that headline. They could have chosen "Non-vaccinated" or "Vaccine Hesitant," or something else, but they went with the sexiest, most dynamic, most attention-grabbing label, which happens to be a political label. Michael Shermer in contrast, in this month's Skeptic cover headline, went with "Vaccine Hesitant."

Despite our possible preferences to internalize and adopt homogeneous propaganda when under pandemic stress, we need to shake ourselves free from kneejerk categorizations. We need to recognize imprecise, garbled language and categories that serve primarily as political shorthand. Glossing over reality by using foggy language loaded with political dog whistles is not the key to actually seeing that reality or coping with it.

Bob Dietz

February 4, 2022

Brady Retires

Tom Brady retired yesterday. Surprisingly, I have nothing bad to say about him.

I remember Brady at Michigan. The Wolverines kept trying to unseat him as their starting quarterback, but he saved their bacon at crunch time so often that they finally conceded that he was their starter.

Rather than repeating all of Brady's well-known accomplishments, I'll focus on his record against the spread. The following numbers are courtesy of Marc Lawrence's fine annual football magazine, Playbook. Heading into the 2021 season, Brady's career record against the spread was 191-131, which is awesome. Even more awesome was his record as an underdog, a scintillating 41-17 ATS. As a home underdog, get this, he was 11-1 ATS. Coming off a loss, which are crucial games for perennial winning teams, he was 48-22 ATS. 

Being a gambling man, I was aware of these numbers and tried to find spots this season to bet against him, since the value was in going versus. Well, Brady was never an underdog in 2021, so I didn't really have an opportunity. He finished 10-9 ATS for the season.

Brady's retirement comments never mentioned CTE directly, but there was a flavor of awareness to what he said. The older quarterbacks get, the more hits they take. 

Brady called it a day at, if not the height of his abilities, at least an elevation far above most mortal quarterbacks. I doubt that he will return to the game. He doesn't, to use his own words, do anything "half-assed." I suspect that being a retired Tom Brady as husband and father is going to be challenge aplenty. He'll undoubtedly give it his all.

Bob Dietz

February 2, 2022

 

Propaganda Files: Aaron Rodgers (Part One)

The title of the piece we'll examine is "The spectacular rise and fall of Aaron Rodgers." The author is Dean Obeidallah, and the updated version was published January 23 by CNN.

Here's what I won't be doing in this entry. I won't be supporting Aaron Rodgers regarding his use of homeopathy as a path to being "immunized." Homeopathy is junk. I would call it "junk science," but the words "science" and "homeopathy" do not belong in each other's company. There is no mechanism, besides placebo effects, by which homeopathy can work. Whatever The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper would say about homeopathy, my response will be just as harsh. Don't take my word for it, however. Go search the dozens of homeopathy-debunking articles in Michael Shermer's The Skeptic magazine during the last decade. In summary, I am not defending homeopathy.

I am also not defending Rodgers' squirrely use of the word "immunized" in response to presser questions. That was a dishonest attempt at ducking a question. Of course, the fact that nobody at the presser thought to follow up with "What exactly do you mean by 'immunized?'" speaks to the sophistication of the sports press corps (and yes, Sheldon, that was sarcasm).

I don't know much about the author, Dean Obeidallah, but he seems to be trying too hard in this piece. He butchers something obvious, which CNN editors should have caught immediately. The fact that they did not catch it, or caught it and allowed the piece to publish anyway, is damning. It's not like I read this a dozen times. The obvious botch was evident on my initial read. Obeidallah's journalistic whiff is the centerpiece of this entry, and I'll get to it in a minute. First, however, some comments on Obeidallah's approach to the piece.

Axe to Grind

I don't know what issues Obeidallah has with the Green Bay quarterback, and I don't know if they are personal or imposed by CNN management, but the entire piece comes across as a hatchet job. And I'm not an Aaron Rodgers fan (I mean, homeopathy -- c'mon, man). But the author is off the rails on some self-righteous quest to denigrate Rodgers.

The title, for one thing, is ridiculous. Just ridiculous. The author evidently feels that Rodgers should be measuring himself by social media love as opposed to his professional play. There has been no "fall" for Aaron Rodgers except for social media grief. Green Bay's loss to San Fran had little to do Rodgers' performance. He was fine. Not ultra-sharp, but fine. I say this as someone who has gambled on football professionally for 40 years. There was no Rodgers professional "fall" because the Packers simply lost a game. 

Now, if Obeidallah is talking about some Rodgers social media "fall," well, unless Obeidallah has numbers to share regarding percentage of positive versus negative tweets, emails, and so on, then he's just spouting his opinion with not much to back it up. In terms of writing, nothing is easier than sampling social media and cherry-picking whatever you like to make a case for whatever you want to say. Plugging in this and that social media quote to make your case is lazy writing. It's junk "writing" like homeopathy is junk "science." 

Propping up an article with cherry-picked quotes is easy and manipulative. If you have social media statistics, share them (not that Rodgers would give a damn). But don't select quotes and slap them together to invent a narrative. That's cheap, junk writing. Basically, the author is using his personal filter to quote the most useful-to-his-spiel social media content, and the author gets to wash his hands of direct responsibility under the guise of "I'm quoting others."

CNN's Journalistic Botch

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, so I wouldn't have singled out this piece for analysis. Shrillness of tone and righteousness aren't that interesting to me. But what CNN allowed, which I will point out shortly, is either a Journalism 101 botch or cynically manipulative writing with an end justifying the means. I'm going to take the high road for a while and theorize a botch. If Obeidallah didn't catch himself, any CNN editor should have. This was a grade school journalism flub.

I'm going to quote the paragraphs in question, then examine them closely. Obeidallah says, "But instead, Rodgers fumbled badly in late December by again sharing misleading information about Covid. While on a radio show, Rodgers slammed NFL protocols designed to keep players safe as unmerited, saying, 'It makes no sense to me to continue to spread this narrative that nonvaccinated players are more dangerous or these superspreaders, which hasn't been proven to be true.'"

Okay, digest that, and we'll get right back to it. Obeidallah continues, "He (Rodgers) added, 'It's obviously not a pandemic of the unvaxxed.'"

Obeidallah then writes, "In reality, a CDC study last fall found that unvaccinated people were about 4.5 times more likely to be infected with Covid-19 and 10 times more likely to be hospitalized. The NFL's protocols were simply designed to save lives, not play politics."

Alright, I'm going to pause for a moment. I'm going to assume that many if not most readers, like CNN editors, find nothing immediately wrong with Obeidallah's comments regarding the Rodgers' quotes. I am going to do my best Dragnet's Joe Friday imitation and slowly walk through why this is a journalistic and writing fail.

Debunking Obeidallah

First of all, this piece was published January 23, 2022, which means that the dominant strains of Covid in the United States are Delta and Omicron. This matters for a number of reasons. Foremost, it matters because viral load for the vaccinated who are infected with these strains is roughly the same as viral load for the unvaccinated who are infected. This wasn't the case for the original strain. So an unvaccinated person, once infected with Delta or Omicron and in contact with someone, is no more likely to transmit the disease than a vaccinated person. There is some debate, still ongoing, about length of infectiousness varying with Omicron. The debate is whether the vaccinated tend to be infectious for a day or two less than the unvaccinated. The CDC has recently gone quiet regarding that argument. The motive for investigating the possible difference was that the United States had started sending people back to work after five days while most other countries stuck to the 10-day quarantine formula. The U.S. was trying to add leverage to the case for getting vaccinated while also arguing that the vaccinated were not terribly infectious after five days.

What's known is that an unvaccinated infected person has a viral load similar to that of a vaccinated infected person. Just because someone is vaccinated does not mean that, if infected, they spread the disease less. Thus, Rodgers is correct when he says that infected nonvaccinated are no more dangerous than infected vaccinated. This is correct. Vaccinations do not prevent you from transmitting the disease. The unvaccinated are no more superspreaders of the current dominant variants than the vaccinated.

I'll get into R-values another day, but the fact is that we have no public R-values for vaccinated versus unvaccinated infected. There's likely a reason for that, but for now I want to focus on this piece.

Here's the journalistic botch. Obeidallah quotes Rodgers, then follows with his, "In reality, a CDC study last fall found that unvaccinated people were about 4.5 times more likely to be infected with Covid and 10 times more likely to be hospitalized." That line by Obeidallah is a complete non-sequitur to Rodgers, "It makes no sense to me to continue to spread this narrative that nonvaccinated players are more dangerous or these superspreaders, which hasn't been proven to be true." Let me repeat this. Rodgers was correct. Obeidallah's response, to the extent it's meant as a rebuttal to what Rodgers said, is simply a non-sequitur. Rodgers never said anything at all about the likelihood of unvaccinated being infected or anything about hospitalization rates. He simply stated that infected unvaccinated were not more dangerous or more likely superspreaders than infected vaccinated.

There are nuances here that I'll briefly examine and then delve into in a later entry. For example, if it's true that unvaccinated are 4.5 times more likely to be infected, how does that affect the overall context? Well, the likelihood of people being infected or not infected is the result of many, many variables. If the vaccine efficacy rates, which are modest for Delta and Omicron, are correct, then other variables are responsible for the 4.5 times number, if indeed other studies have verified the 4.5. Also, since Dr. Fauci stated on January 13 that "just about everybody" in the U.S. would be infected at some point, that 4.5 times figure is largely irrelevant and may be a statistical snapshot of a particular time many months ago that no longer applies.

More Obeidallah Writing Choices

If Obeidallah had simply followed Rodgers, "It's obviously not a pandemic of the unvaxxed," with the CDC study info, then one could argue that Obeidallah had a point regarding that specific Rodgers line, but that point would rely on one's definition of "pandemic of the unvaxxed." Instead, however, Obeidallah pasted the two Rodgers quotes (one about "not superspreaders" and the other "not a pandemic of unvaxxed") back-to-back, which means that the Obeidallah CDC lines are placed as a rebuttal to both of Rodgers' quotes. This is not a small point.

Obeidallah and CNN's editors chose to place these lines as they did. Had they not meant to attack both of Rodgers' lines by referencing the CDC study, the first Rodgers line about superspreaders would have been placed somewhere else. By implying that the first Rodgers line was somehow debunked by the CDC study, Obeidallah was being dishonest. The CDC study did not contradict the first Rodgers statement in any way.

Obeidallah had every opportunity to mention viral loads for unvaccinated infected being similar to viral loads for vaccinated infected. He and CNN chose to not do that. When writers use non-sequiturs posing as rebuttals and they skip something like viral load info, well, that equals propaganda.

"Pandemic of the Unvaxxed"

The CDC study quoted by Obeidallah opens up the debate about what is meant by a "pandemic of the unvaxxed." The reality is that the unvaccinated may be at more risk for getting infected on any given day, but Dr. Fauci has said we're all going to eventually be infected, so that doesn't really clarify a difference long-term between vaccinated and unvaccinated. What's clear is that the unvaccinated are at much more risk of hospitalization. If you want to define "pandemic" as "who is hospitalized," then it's accurate right now to say it's a "pandemic of the unvaxxed." But if "pandemic of the unvaxxed" is supposed to imply that the unvaccinated are predominant spreaders of Covid, that is, as Rodgers says, unproven. And likely wrong.

Conclusion

I cannot believe that CNN's editors allowed the structure of Obeidallah's piece. The CDC study quotes are meant to anchor the Rodgers-is-obviously-wrong argument, but they are largely a non-sequitur to the gist of what Rodgers actually said. 

What's missing from the piece are any discussions of vaccinated/unvaccinated viral loads, transmissibility sameness of vaccinated/unvaccinated with Delta and Micron, and any speculation regarding R-values. Why are these key elements of the discussion missing in action?

The piece is a Rodgers hatchet job, but I don't care about that. What concerns me are the decisions made as to what to say and not say about Covid. When you consider the choices as to what was said, what was skipped, and the tricky sequencing of particular sentences for effect rather than truth value, the overall result is propaganda.

Bob Dietz

February 1, 2022

Propaganda Files: Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths

I'm going to begin the "Propaganda Files" series by discussing an opinion piece in Newsweek by attorney Neil Baron. I chose this piece for my lead-off because analyzing it highlights the difference between how I approach things and how people now publishing in American media generally approach things. I bring certain (perhaps naive) expectations to the table, and these are not the expectations of most authors in Newsweek or brand name newspapers or CNN or MSNBC.

My approach and expectations make me an outlier, evidently, although I think I am a reasonable man with logical, obvious expectations. My antennae, however, seem to be tuned to very different frequencies.

Baron's piece, published January 26, is titled, "The Question of Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths." Let me say, first, that I find nothing "wrong" with the piece in terms of facts or logic. I have a problem with what the piece does not say. The disconnect for me, regarding this particular article, is quite jarring. I chose to tackle this piece first because it really does serve as a convenient example of what I see as a pattern by American media.

I highly recommend everyone read it. He begins by comparing Ethan Crumbley's parents, who are charged with manslaughter, to those politicians who discourage Covid vaccination or mask-wearing. The parents can be charged with manslaughter because they were aware that their actions or lack thereof contributed to the risk. As Baron writes, "Proving those charges doesn't require proving intent to cause another's death, only the awareness of risk." 

It's a fascinating argument, and it's hard to evade the legal logic of an analogy to states' anti-mask mandates or the Supreme Court's ruling against President Biden's vaccine mandate. Baron closes with, "They can't help but be aware of the risk of unvaccinated deaths, yet they're choosing to ignore it. That ought to be against the law, and probably is."

My Expectations

Although I heartily endorse Baron's intriguing piece, I had some problems with it. The self-subscribed limits caught me by surprise. With "The Question of Legal Culpability for COVID Deaths" as the title, I had certain expectations. 

First, since I consider deaths due to Covid vaccines as "COVID Deaths," I thought there would be at least some brief mention of culpability and liability involving vaccination deaths or disabilities. It honestly didn't occur to me that the topic wouldn't be mentioned at all. Certainly the U.S. government has some estimate regarding vaccinations gone wrong. But not one word or one number. Topic non grata.

I also thought that if bad red state politicians' advice was considered possibly criminal, then bad CDC advice, like telling people early on that mask-wearing wasn't necessary, might be mentioned as also possibly criminal. The non-mask advice, it turned out, was primarily to conserve mask supplies for medical workers. Certainly, the CDC should have some legal exposure from not recommending masks, especially when other countries were simultaneously saying that masks worked. But no mention of CDC legal exposure.

Perspectives

I have nothing negative to report about what Baron wrote, other than my surprise (given the title) about what he decided to not write. If DeSantis and various are culpable and legally responsible for legislating in favor of pro-risk behaviors that result in more "COVID Deaths," then so was the CDC when it gave misguided advice on masking for the primary purpose of conserving masks for health care workers and not mentioning that was the reason for the advice. 

I flew to Las Vegas during those early days. My girlfriend argued for my wearing masks based on interviews she had watched with South Korean doctors. I argued that the CDC knew what it was doing. I wore gloves, as the CDC recommended, but no mask. I can tell you matter-of-factly that had I contracted Covid and died, the CDC would have been culpable. 

Whatever the limited scope of Baron's piece, given the Newsweek headline title, I expected both a glance at vaccination bad-outcome culpability and CDC culpability. But not a peep. Regarding culpability, I thought I was asking obvious questions that anyone would ask. When these kinds of holes or limitations appear in an article ostensibly about culpability, I need to ask why. I don't think the answers have much to do with column inch limitations.

And that is my point. Much of what is published by Newsweek, USA Today, CNN, and so on assumes a particular perspective that asks some Covid questions, addresses some Covid topics, and consistently avoids others. When perspectives are always framed a certain way, when the rhetoric is generally scripted, relying on these perspectives becomes both rote and laden with unseen risks. In the weeks ahead, these "Propaganda Files" will feature patterns of submission and omission that suggest an overriding editorial process in action. This editorial process may be plotted, planned, and micro-managed administratively, or it may simply be that a ubiquitous intellectual fashion sense results in non-investigative homogeneity. If what's not said forms an unyielding media pattern, if the holes left by what isn't asked are consistent, then we have endemic American propaganda.

Being a professional gambler, I tend to ask everything. That is not a popular thing to do in the 2022 United States. Not popular at all.

Bob Dietz

January 28, 2022

Propaganda Files: The Case of Covid

The entire spectrum of American media has flailed and floundered in its attempt to grasp, much less report, on the realities of the pandemic. During the Trump Covid year, Americans were treated to major media both debunking and supporting Trump's carny barker predictions and recommendations, many of which were absurd and blatantly wrong. It was relatively easy for those of us not in the clown car to see that none of the clowns knew how to drive. Occasionally, some Americans took to drinking bleach or goose stepping to whatever administration blather was promoted at the moment, but for the most part, the emperor didn't do much to hide his intellectual nakedness.

A year under Biden has been very different in style, if not in result. The carny barker has been replaced by mellifluous preachers, telling us more of what we want to hear, but in a smoother-than-Trump way. Trump was a gate-crasher selling used cars with a megaphone. We invited Biden in, and he's pushing some version of societal Amway. All we have to do is buy in to whatever he's selling, and all will be right with both our personal worlds and the culture in general. Except, of course, it isn't.

As propaganda goes, the Biden blather hasn't been as obvious or absurd as Trump's, but really, could anyone gild those Trump informational lillies? Instead, the Biden administration and the bulk of American media have introduced an overwhelming wave of Covid spin. As propaganda, it's not terribly subtle, but it is ubiquitous, which is perhaps why it goes largely unexamined and unchallenged. In twelve months, Biden, American pharmaceutical firms, and American media in general have generated background noise that not only attempts to drown out contrarian voices, but that filters out all data not supportive of a particular grand Covid-19 narrative.

I'm an old former journalism major, and I have never witnessed anything like it. The edits used in presentations, the specific repeated misrepresentations of contrarian arguments, the tidal wave of homogeneous messaging, I have not seen this coming from the United States in my lifetime. These "Propaganda Files" will break down specific media stories and themes. Most of the manipulations and unfair practices are rather easily identified, which is what bothers me as a critic attempting to highlight this stuff. Every Journalism 101 grad should be able to see the problems upon first exposure to most articles. Media professionals and academics teaching the subjects can certainly see all of this more easily and clearly than me. But the homogeneous goose stepping continues with minimal pushback from anyone but a far right more invested in whackadoodle conspiracy fluff than reality. 

How did we get here, and why?

Intro to 2022 Propaganda

Today, as an introduction, I'd like to discuss some of the words crucial to the pandemic. Originally, when the pandemic began in the U.S. in early 2020, "mitigate" meant to make the pandemic less severe or serious for the country as a whole. That initially meant taking actions to stop the spread of Covid. Two years later, the word "mitigate" has become, as used by American government institutions, something quite different. Instead of describing ways to fend off the spread of a deadly virus, now it refers more to reducing the economic impact and to reducing the number of hospitalized or dying. "Mitigate" no longer refers to stopping disease spread, but to conceding virus ubiquity and managing consequences rather than managing spread. What's fascinating is that, with the introduction of vaccines, one would anticipate the definition of "mitigate" moving away from acceptance of virus spread. The transmissibility of Delta and Omicron, however, has eased the use of "mitigate" in the other direction.

The Biden administration and current U.S. narratives try to have it both ways. What is implied in all of the pro-vaccine "mitigation" language is that vaccination somehow still prevents spread, although with Delta and Omicron, there is little evidence of that. 

This transition from "mitigate" referring to "stopping virus spread" to "mitigate" as meaning "managing the economy and the economy of health care" is significant. It is not some kind of necessary or natural evolution in attitude and use of the term. Many other countries still define "mitigate" as primarily referring to stopping the spread of Covid itself. 

"Civic Duty"

"Civic duty" is another phrase that has evolved during the last two years. Mention of and emphases on "civic duty" initially referred to mask wearing and social distancing. These were individual acts with clear benefits to others as well as to self. Unless people are morbidly obese and living up three flights of stairs, there is no objective cost to wearing a mask or maintaining social distancing.

Now, "civic duty" has extended to some amorphous need to get vaccinated so as to keep oneself out of hospitals and reduce stress on the not-really-national health care system. This is a very curious and dramatic shift in the media definition of pandemic "civic duty."

The original emphasis really carried no negatives for self. But getting a vaccine that is effective only against the variant du jour is a different type of alleged civic duty. It creates (eventually measurable) self risk with each application, and the individual assumes all kinds of long-term risks. This is not an exaggeration, as long-term Covid and vaccine effects are still unknown since we are nowhere near anything that could be considered long-term.

Analyzing Propaganda

These evolutions in meaning have been pernicious, that is, gradual and increasingly subtle. I'm sure that there are hundreds of graduate students in fields from communication to social psychology who are cataloguing the language of these times and who are also fully aware of the shifts and manipulations. Eventually, actual scientists will come forth with their observations regarding the influence communication of the last two years. Until then, I'll stick to what I do best -- point out the obvious that few appear to notice and fewer want to discuss. Then I'll just plod forward, doing the best I can.

What I believe will happen with most of my analyses is that people will be surprised at the obviousness of what I point out, they'll acknowledge it because there won't be a way to ignore it, and then most will say, "But..." Their first reflex will be "But," and then there will be an excuse or a pooh poohing of the observation. Those in journalism, however, are going to be sensitized. And that's all I can really do.

The majority of these "Propaganda Files" will focus on specific articles with particular journalistic flaws that should be caught by anyone who's taken two journalism courses or who has ever worked at a newspaper. There's no shortage of examples, so I'll get to it.

Bob Dietz

January 28, 2022 

Everyone's a Racist

Let me begin with my premise, namely that virtually everyone is something called "racist," which I'll get around to defining in a bit. One of the problems with my premise, and it's a significant problem, is that there doesn't appear to be anything concrete in the real world that corresponds to something called "race." Biologists and physical anthropologists came to the conclusion 50 years ago that "race" doesn't really exist on its own. Race, it turns out, may be more of an epiphenomenon, something that arises out of the inherent structures and priorities of various cultural contexts. If this is correct, then "race" is a tool rather than some objective thing that exists of its own accord. A convenient Aesop's Fable emerging due to forces, "race" as an epiphenomenon would potentially have much in common with consciousness. It's worth noting that the "race" in "critical race theory" is also viewed by critical race proponents as an epiphenomenon that obfuscates numbers and statistics regarding wealth inequality, incarceration disparateness, vertical mobility, and other structural elements baked into the American experience.

However, taking a deep breath, let's ignore all that for now. Critical race theory isn't going anywhere soon, so we can circle back to it another time. Today, I just want to promote my theory that pretty much everyone is racist, including me. My theory requires my personal definition of what is racist, which I will explain in due time. But first, some personal history.

Growing Up

I grew up in a lily-white small coal mining town in Pennsylvania, just 10 miles or so from Centralia, the famous little berg that's now abandoned as it falls into the 50-year-old mine fire burning underneath it. By lily-white, I mean my town had no black people. Zero. We were sans African Americans. Until I turned six, in 1963, I had never seen an African American. 

When I was six, my father decided to take me on a summer trip to visit my aunt and her family, whom I had never met, in Philadelphia. It was just my dad and me in the car as we drove the two hours. A few minutes into the trip, my father launched into a serious monologue about how black people were "just like us" and there was no reason to be concerned. Minutes passed, and he started on the same topic again. He had been an engineer in the U.S. Army, he explained, and worked with many black people. They were "just like us."

If there was one thing my religiously attending Lutheran Sunday school had taught me, it was "Red and yellow, black and white; they are precious in His sight," so I had never really considered skin color as making people different. I couldn't understand why my dad kept repeating this stuff. I just nodded my head in agreement.

Finally, after another hour or so as we approached Philadelphia, he broached the subject of "Philadelphia has a lot of black people" a third time. I had struggled to figure out what he was getting at. I interrupted and asked, "So auntie and my cousins are black?" Dad stopped his spiel and started laughing. I had no idea why he felt my conclusion was funny, but it turned out that, no, auntie wasn't black. 

My Personal History with "Nigger"

It may come as a surprise to people, with my being a self-avowed racist, that I have never actually called or referred to anyone as a "nigger." As I mentioned, I grew up in a hard-scrabble, completely white town, so it's been odds-against that I never referred to anybody as a "nigger." I'm not particularly proud of this; it just kind of happened via Sunday school and Spider-Man comics. My non-use of "nigger" in that way is a curious byproduct of happenstance and my micro-culture. It's sort of similar to my never having been with a prostitute in the Biblical sense (I have hung out with a few). Not really something to be proud of per se, but now that it's part of my self-definition, it's not likely that I'll break the pattern.

Just because I never called someone a "nigger," however, does not mean that I haven't used the word. I have zero problems discussing the word "nigger" by saying "nigger." In fact, it seems silly to do otherwise. And I have quoted other people directly who used the word "nigger." I have also said, "Well, that is what is referred to as 'nigger rich.'"

Are these uses of "nigger" why I consider myself racist? No, they are not. If you think that banning the saying of it solves much of anything, good for you. I'm not that kind of optimist.

Why Everyone is Racist

Saying you're not racist doesn't make you not-a-racist. In this era of 24/7 personal surveillance, never saying anything racist also does not bestow unto you not-a-racist status. Nobody knows what goes on in that head of yours, so recording what comes out of your mouth isn't necessarily much of a clue as to your racism. And if we suddenly acquire mind-reading skills, I'm not sure that completely solves the "who's a racist" dilemma either. Is what percolates through our consciousness a sufficient measure of us?

My theory, which would define 99.9999% of us as racist, bypasses what comes out of our mouths, what flits through our minds, and all manner of self-reporting. If we physiologically react differently to people different from us, then I submit that we are racist. To the degree that our culture defines race in terms of skin color or physical features, then if we physiologically respond differently to "the other" than we do to clones of ourselves, we are racist. 

Thus, if we are hooked up to a GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) monitor, an EEG, and an EKG, and our physiology responds in disparate fashion to a room full of "crackers" versus "niggers," then we are racist. Your body doesn't lie. I'm not saying that our responses need be heightened or more extreme to indicate racism. I'm saying that difference in reaction would be the indicator. 

Cultural Conundrum

If "race" isn't really a thing, as physical anthropologists have argued, then we all need to step back in awe and examine the effects our culture may impose on our physiology.

Consider the brilliant Dave Chappelle's character, Clayton Bigsby, the blind black white supremacist who think he's white because no one's told him otherwise. Think about Bigsby's physiological reactions to people he's told are white or black. In his series of Bigsby sketches, Chappelle plugs into the unsolvable nature of our cultural labyrinth, which traps us in a maze without perspective and without anything we can use as a mirror. 

We are all racists, which is quite a thing to be when there may not be something called "race."

Bob Dietz

January 24, 2022