I only listened to parts of his videos a couple times but have read enough about him in recent years to know who he is. I got the impression that his schtick is similar to the boy who said, "Oh my! The king doesn't have any clothes on!"
About ten days ago NPR did what I would call a "hit piece" on Shapiro. The angle was interesting because of the angle of their attack. The title of the article -- a transcript of what played on All Things Considered -- is "Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire."
The article begins by showing the size of his audience and the success he has achieved. He has more followers than the Washington Post. What's more, the content he creates has more likes and shares than any other news producers "by a wide margin." In short, what he's doing is generating engagement. What's wrong with that?
Well, to paraphrase, it's not fair. The NYTimes and Washington Post have big staffs to support. In other words, he gets so much more reach and has more impact than he deserves.
One things that's not fair to his competitors, including NPR I suspect, is that he doesn't do journalism. That is, he doesn't have a staff researching stories. Rather, he talks about the stories that the paid staff of other media enterprises create. He's basically a reporter on the way that they -- liberal media -- cover the news.
I think what irks left-leaning media like NPR and CNN is that Shapiro is successful. Also, he seems skilled at showing how THEY are spinning the stories they tell.
The story makes a fascinating accusation a little further on. They interview an expert who explains how even when there is nothing untrue in what is said, the effect is to create a false narrative. "If you've stripped enough context away, any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation."
Well, it takes one to know one. This is precisely the game liberal media has played for ages. Bernard Goldberg's book Bias showed how Dan Rather would discard stories that countered the narrative he was constantly striving to weave. Bias uses example after example to make its point. The book's subtitle is, A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News. (For the record, Goldberg was second in command behind Rather at CBS. He saw it all, firsthand.)
Last year there were journalists on the New York Times who protested when the Times printed an editorial by a conservative GOP congressman on their Opinion page. The impression I got from the article was that some staffers think balanced reporting is wrong, that we are in a war of ideas and journalists have to take a stand. (i.e. slanting the story is O.K. if it serves higher purposes.)
Here's another barb from the NPR story. "Traditional media would set the agenda but not necessarily tell people what to think," Freelon said. "Ben Shapiro is sort of cornering both aspects: telling [people] what to think about, and secondly, telling them what their opinions should be about those particular topics."
When Freelon says, "traditional media" he is referring to mainstream media, which conservatives have dubbed MSM as a pejorative. Conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro (I suspect, having never listened much to either) may agree that MSM does not Tell people what to think, they just EXPECT you to think this way "because it is the correct way to think."
MY TAKE is that people need to use their brains, read both sides and not behave like infants eating baby food, eating whatever flavor is spooned into their mouths. We need to assume responsibility for mental hygiene as well as our physical health. "You know that what you eat you are" applies to mind food and not just to vitamins and veggies.
HERE'S THE ORIGINAL STORY FROM NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/19/1013793067/outrage-as-a-business-model-how-ben-shapiro-is-using-facebook-to-build-an-empire
2 comments:
I commuted for years, and on the drive home I listened to Ben Shapiro's show. I don't share his politics, but I've always been impressed with how bright he is and how he manages to turn extemporaneousness into an art form. I think you're right, though, when you say he basically reports on how reporters report. Nonetheless, I'll listen to anyone who can teach me anything, and Shapiro is a Harvard Law grad who taught me quite a bit about how the law, politics, and journalism intersect.
My take on it is that the mainstream media Big Lie Bird has two wings, one right, and one left.
The two wings are incessantly flapping in seemingly opposite directions, but both carry the bird forward.
The left tells the truth when it says that the right lies, and the right tells the truth when it says that the left lies, but there are certain matters that they are in basic agreement on: the "official stories" of WWII, the assassinations, 9/11, the benefits of modern medicine, the pandemic, etc.
They make a big show of disagreeing on details on the above matters, but it is only "conspiracy theorists" who make an honest attempt to dig to the bottom of those matters.
And of course "conspiracy theorist" is a buzz-word used by both wings of the mainstream media, used against those who don't accept EITHER side of the b.s., and want the truth, instead.
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