Consuming Journalism: LA Times, QAnon
Hello, I’m back. I used to post fairly regularly about journalism. Count me in the crowd that believes solid journalism is a critical component of a healthy, functioning democracy.
Unfortunately, journalists don’t always hold up their ends of the bargain. I was disappointed to see that a lot of people I know weren’t spotting the gaps, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies in journalism. In general, I think it’s because people aren’t applying the Who What Where Why When How questions they employ in most other facets of their lives.
I stopped posting out of despair. But I just can’t seem to let it go entirely. We need to get better about recognizing inaccurate and incomplete information and asking ourselves what we can actually conclude from information presented to us. The good news is that it’s easy. So I figured I’d dip my toes back in. This time around I’ll include more positive examples and also talk about something much more interesting - documentary photography.
Today’s article is a good one.
“From 4chan to Congress? A guide to the QAnon conspiracy theory” | Arit John, LA Times
I know very little about QAnon and its associated websites. I clicked on the article because I wanted to learn more about QAnon.
Verdict: I thought the author provided a well-written, informative overview of QAnon, supporters’ belief that President Trump is a fellow traveler, and congressional candidates possibly linked to QAnon. It would be interesting to read posts attributed to QAnon, but the imageboards mentioned in the article confuse me.
I’ve always been interested in conspiracy theories. I think a lot of them word their arguments similarly. I watched the video Pandemic about the coronavirus. From the outset I recognized the language structure or phrasing that I associate with conspiracy theories. There’s often a lot of passive voice, unidentified actors, the vague they, and mysterious, powerful organizations or people working to ensure that the truth is not revealed. (I should add that I believe there are powerful people who will go to great lengths to ensure the truth is not revealed.)
One of the most interesting things in the article was to get a sense of how seriously academics take conspiracy theories. The article quotes 3 people who specialize in things like political psychology and conspiracies.