The Pravda claim that corporate news organizations are superior to independent journalists and bloggers boils down to the idea that their resources and ethics enable, and require, them to fact-check stories before publication.
Bloggers and the indies all have axes to grind, but the "mainstream" news sources are Joe Friday, presenting just the facts.
Uh, yeah. Right. Got it. Definitely a good point.
@FBI_Response Facts over clickbait
— FBI Director Kash Patel (@FBIDirectorKash) October 14, 2026
The difference between "mainstream" news sources and others boils down to this more than anything: they have bigger megaphones, multi-billion-dollar corporations, and credentials that imply facts not in evidence. More people watch or read them, believing the bulls**t they sell, than read the smaller guys, who, while mostly reactive to what gets put out by the media outlets with the resources to collect "news," are also doing the job that the bigger media outlets choose not to: get to the bottom of stories.
Don't get me wrong; many bloggers and independent journalists do real investigations, and many also are as Narrative™ driven as the big guys, but in the marketplace of ideas you are much more likely to arrive at something akin to the truth if you extend your news consumption far beyond what the corporate media tries to sell you.
And it's not just hoaxes that are the problem, although the media puts out a steady stream of them. It's sloppy reporting and biased presentation, leaving out facts that would change the story, or even cutting and pasting quotes to invent new meanings out of thin air.
Did Donald Trump say that there were "fine people on both sides"? Technically, yes. Did he include the white supremacists? No, he explicitly excluded them, and the media cut that out of the video and sold a lie.
The New York Times regularly publishes falsehoods, has printed Op/Eds from actual Hamas commanders while portraying them as doctors, famously printed a false photo and casualty report from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad misfired missile, and blamed the attack on Israel. It published photos of "famine victims" that were not famine victims. And those are just a few examples of self-conscious choices to lie outright. That doesn't even include the mistakes.
@baseballcrank "Layers and layers of fact-checkers"
— David Strom (@DavidStrom) June 1, 2024
Back when blogging was taking off, the media attacks on independent journalists and bloggers were that the big boys had "layers and layers" of fact-checkers, ensuring they got the story right. That was always a deceptive framing, since they ensured the correct Narrative™ was promoted.
But now they have barely any editors or fact-checkers, and the old-school reporters are long gone, replaced by social justice activists.
The best attitude for people consuming "news" is to assume what they are being told is, at best, provisionally true, and likely to be wrong in many ways or spun from a certain perspective.
As I argued earlier today, certain kinds of spin are acceptable as long as people know you are sharing your perspective, not distorting the facts. Which facts are truly relevant to one's point varies from person to person, and genuine disagreements about values often show up in which facts you present as most important. How often have you heard someone tell you a story and wondered, "How did they come up with the idea that THAT was the important fact?"
That's just the nature of human beings seeing the world through different eyes.
Kash Patel is not in Russia, FBI reveals - exposing false MS Now report https://t.co/tGrSJcPCmu https://t.co/LFhzlxJOBt
— New York Post (@nypost) October 14, 2026
But basic facts are something different. No world has Kash Patel simultaneously in Russia and at a law enforcement appreciation event at Liberty U. MS NOW is not presenting a different perspective on a real thing; it is spreading falsehoods.
Which brings me to my point: the corporate media simply doesn't care much about facts unless they can manipulate them to back up their pre-chosen narrative. That is a myth. And until every single persuadable person understands that, our job is to dispel it.
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