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Chop chop

I was completely ignorant of the fuss over the edited Trump speech in an edition of Panorama until, one moment later, I wasn't. And the reasons for my ignorance are instructive.

I had no idea that the story was even brewing until the surprise Sunday night news of the resignations of Tom Davie and Deborah Turness. As I'm sure you are by now aware, this was occasioned by a clumsy edit in an old edition of Panorama, which has already been on the iplayer for a year. It's a non-story.

Except people decided to make it a story. The reason I'd heard nothing of it until the resignations was that I'm not on X, where, apparently, it was all the media classes had been talking about for a week. It was an obsession of the unholy right-wing trifecta of the Mail, Telegraph and Times (who, given that they sent a bloke just last week to interview the wrong Bill di Blasio, you'd think would wind their necks in over factual inacccuracy). It was big news on GB news, all self-contained ecosystems (you can't say echo chambers, they hate echo chambers, it's only an echo chamber when it's not them echoing).

It would be fascinating, if it wasn't so terrifying. Since Musk took X over, it has become a disinformation machine, a generator of fake outrage, an incitement to violence, and I'm pretty surely that the unwillingness of anyone in our political classes to get a grip of the situation is largely due to their addiction to the hellsite. Numbers, baby, look at that follower count.

And now every right wing ghoul who wants complete corporate control of the media is lining up to have a pop at the Beeb, the shadow fucking culture secretary is saying they should "grovel" to Trump, which is NOT A THING NORMAL PEOPLE SAY. All the shameless hypocrites and paid shills are banging the drum to bring the Beeb down, whipping each other into yet further frenzies over...well, not much. A clumsy editorial decision, but not factually inaccurate. Trump *did* instigate the Jan 6th riots, he *did* pardon the rioters, he *did* falsely claim the election was rigged and refuse to acknowledge the result.

What this is about is money wanting to inflict misery on the public domain, but that's another post altogether. But seriously, if you value your sanity, get off X.

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