A.G. Gancarski’s Post

A poll found that nearly 1 in 5 Americans believe the conspiracy theory that singer-songwriter Taylor Swift is a government psyop to reelect President Joe Biden. As fact-checkers, PolitiFact had questions: How meaningful is any poll when asking about a conspiracy theory? How much room do poll respondents have to fill in the blanks about how far the conspiracy stretches? And could support for the theory simply be standing in for disdain for Biden, Swift or both? Read more from PolitiFact: https://lnkd.in/er3-sC_5

Please read my latest Substack column about Trump's influence on America's loss of trust in news media. As confidence in media plummets, the news media practice "anticipatory obedience" to Trump and his minions. I would appreciate your comments below.

Get ready for the BIG CHEAT to begin. (Most likely ongoing for the last 6 years.)

Conservative Witches and Pagans! There might be another way to get the conservative message out there! Check out the latest at The Conservative Cauldron! https://lnkd.in/gb3rKEB5

Interesting read from USNews

My latest New York Post column is live!

5 Things To Watch For At The Vice Presidential Debate

WSJ Weekend Interview with Nate Silver, 46, statistician, writer, and poker player who analyzes elections also founder of FiveThirtyEight He has a new book out next week, “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” in which he interviews professional gamblers, venture capitalists, adventurers and others known for their “mastery of risk” and develops a philosophical framework around their insights. The book touches only lightly on politics, but some of its concepts have obvious application. One of them is “decoupling,” which means, roughly, thinking with analytical detachment, including the separation of facts from feelings. Journalists used to call it objectivity, an aspiration that has fallen out of fashion in recent decades, especially in the Trump era. A failure to decouple explains the widespread denial of Mr. Biden’s decline in the months before his withdrawal. Clear evidence became mistakable when distorted through the lenses of partisanship, ideology and antipathy toward Mr. Trump. I ask Mr. Silver if people have trouble understanding the difference between probability and certainty. He says no, at least not in everyday life: “If you see a weather forecast, there’s a 30% chance of rain, you carry an umbrella if you’re going a long way. Or if you’re flying some airline and there’s a 30% chance that the flight is late and you have an important business meeting the next morning, you might jump on an earlier flight.” The difference is that “people don’t want to see political outcomes as being governed by things that are outside of their control.” Sees Harris a slight favorite, but says the race is far from over. She could fall victim to the groupthink that led to denial of Biden’s decline.

I don't often share news analysis, but a recent New Yorker piece by Nathan Heller on the 2024 election grabbed my attention. The big insight? We don't seek news anymore - it "rubs against us" through fragments across platforms. Think about your last major story: did anyone read the full announcement, or just catch pieces across social? Five crucial shifts: 📢 Ambient Presence: "It's about seeding the ambience of information... like minnows released individually into a pond, they will eventually school and spawn." 📰 National Media 2.0: Legacy media matters - not for readers, but as a launching pad for credibility that travels. 🎯 Events Evolved: Modern events exist "simply to set a vibe and keep certain broad suggestions" circulating. 🔍 Details Don't Always Travel: The article puts it bluntly: "Detail, even when it's available, doesn't travel widely after all. Big, sloppy notions do." 🌊 Platform Power: Success means maximizing presence where your audience naturally encounters information - where they're "rubbed by the news." 🔑 The Bottom Line: The new benchmark isn't about perfect messages. It's about creating an environment where your story lives naturally "in the wild." https://lnkd.in/eFBsUmSX

Incredible answer from Bezos about the Wapo, love that : "In the annual public surveys about trust and reputation, journalists and the media have regularly fallen near the very bottom, often just above Congress. But in this year’s Gallup poll, we have managed to fall below Congress. Our profession is now the least trusted of all. Something we are doing is clearly not working." full article here https://lnkd.in/gex8PvBY