Julian Sanchez Explains How Your Nutlog Newscycle Sausage Gets Made

Over at his eponymous blog, Julian Sanchez performs an essential service for all of us living in the Age Of The Ground Zero Terror Mosquerade, by outlining the simple process by which a fake news story becomes a Grand National Obsession.

1. Faux Story

2. Why is the Em-Ess-Em ignoring this huge Faux Story?

3. After days or weeks of flood-the-zone coverage across multiple conservative media outlets, some significant portion of the base is convinced that the faux story is true and/or significant.

4. Mainstream press takes note of (3) and speculates about the political and electoral consequences

5. Panicked Democrats react as though the faux story is true and/or significant

6. See, we told you it was huge story!

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Pretty solid. Joel Meares at Columbia Journalism Review adds some substeps of his own. For my part, I'd point out that one wrinkle worth noting is that as one segment of the media goes chasing after the shiny object in Step Four ("My precioussssss!"), there's going to be another segment of the media ("Em-Ess-Em" and otherwise) that will step in and attempt fact-check/debunk/clarify the story ("Hey, guys, we should really toss this into the fires of Mordor, maybe!"). Many would argue (-- or suggest that it's arguable --) that the attempts to restore a degree of rationality to the discourse only helps to exacerbate this toxic cycle. (This is probably what happens in Julian's "rinse" cycle.)

RELATED:
The New News Cycle [Julian Sanchez]

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Comments

[lgillooly]

04:46 PM on 08/26/2010

When will the media expose what the real story is? The real story is a massive takeover of our media by right wing corporate money that hire highly paid prostitutes like Rush, Hannity, Beck Savage etc to say ANYTHING that will protect the status quo of their industries.
Wall St Big Oil War profiteers Pharma/health Insurance Telecoms
Since these industries control the GOP they need to regain power. All of these hate wedge issues are just a smokescreen to frighten voters and incite hate and division for the GOP/Big industries to get elected.
When we repealed the Fairness Doctrine we allowed our 4th Estate to be controlled by a handful of megacorps and jeopardized our democracy.We are now much closer to a corporatocracy.Unless lies, propaganda, inciting hate and violence by talk radio and Fox is exposed and held accountable our Government will be completely of, by and for Wall St, Exxon, Blackwater, Verizon and friends.

[greyhound2]

11:39 AM on 08/26/2010

It's mostly the "Herd Instinct" which governs most news stories on most new outlets. Not to be accused of failing to report the dumb story, the dumb story is repeated over and over and picked up other outlets to repeat over and over. In the end, regardless of the repitition, it is still just a dumb story, but at least everybody knows about it.

[tacevad]

11:19 AM on 08/26/2010

Yellow Journalism lives, only the names and the media have been changed.

[henrypapillon]

01:19 AM on 08/26/2010

Is that really recycled newspaper being made into sausage?

[miketothad]

12:17 AM on 08/26/2010

Somebody, please fwd this to the White House and the DNC.

[smchp]

11:38 PM on 08/25/2010

Of course Jason and HuffPuff pretend they are just innocent bystanders when in fact they are part of the problem. They do pretty much exactly what Jason just described.

[lynettema]

11:01 PM on 08/25/2010

Well, the rw Rove group is using this ginned up mosque issue in the grossest ad I have ever seen in my state. I can't believe our local channel is running it.

[StopThePlanet]

08:11 PM on 08/25/2010

Rachel Maddow pretty much said this about the mosque story in another article on this site. Very sad for us as a nation.

[jerzygurl]

07:10 PM on 08/25/2010

The jealousy of the progressives and their media outlets towards the continual success of Fox News is AMAZING & at the same time PATHETIC!...LOL

[maat]

10:14 PM on 08/25/2010

Sorry jerzygurl it is not jealousy. It is frustration that they poison every important debate that we should be discussing like adults. You really shouldn't be LOL, but I understand.

[reveal5]

12:24 AM on 08/26/2010

Fox isn't news. It is political nonreality soap opera.. Some folks just don't know the difference.

[maat]

06:39 PM on 08/25/2010

Why do MSM and Dems fall for this over and over and over again. I am mystified.

[StopThePlanet]

08:12 PM on 08/25/2010

It's like when I pretend to throw the ball for my dog and she always thinks that I did.

[lynettema]

11:03 PM on 08/25/2010

Because the RW campaigns and wins on this cr@p.

[RACVC]

06:19 PM on 08/25/2010

Very clever and succinct!