A Closed Ecosystem

A closed ecosystem is "a self-replenishing ecosystem in which life can be maintained without external factors or outside aid".   I'm familiar with the concept having worked in the environmental field for many years.

It is what media, including social media, have been busily constructing in America over the past few years; an echo chamber in which only certain voices can be heard and others excluded.

Over the past decade we've seen the growth of "fact-checking", an industry dominated by progressive minded institutions like Politifact, Snopes and the various legacy media outfits like the New York Times and the TV and cable networks.  

They apply a common and consistent approach depending on the political orientation of the statement source and the narrative these institutions seek to impose on consumers.

If it is Republican or GOP both the literal statement and the context in which it is set will be scrutinized meticulously.  If the statement is actually correct but there is context omitted it is declared "false".  It the statement has inaccuracies but the missing context provides support for the assertion the statement is still declared "false".  The opposite occurs if a progressive or Democrat is the source of the statement.  I've seen fact checkers acknowledge a statement by a Democrat is actually false but then supply some additional context and declare the statement "partially true"!

Then the social media take the fact checker conclusions into their process for determining what their users can see or whether warnings need to be posted regarding certain articles thus reinforcing a virtuous circle for progressives.

The same approach is taken regarding determining if a group or individual is engaged in hate speech.  Media companies rely or cite to certain groups when reporting on this subject or, in the case of social media, actually engage these groups to help determine if certain speech should be banned from their platforms.  Many of these groups are actually hate groups themselves though positioned on the Left, who deliberately sent out to demonize those with whom they disagree.  An example is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) which outrageously and overbroadly classifies its political opponents as hate groups in order to get them banned and condemned.

The SPLC is also an example of another phenomenon - the takeover of once respectable organizations by Progressives who turn them to evil purposes but profit from the long-standing brand reputation and continue to suck in contributions.  Forty years ago the SPLC was a fine organization fighting real racists like the KKK.  Today, it is a fund-raising scam with hundred of millions in slush funds and happily designating anyone not 100% following the progressive line as a hater.  Other organizations that have gone through the same mutation include Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union.

More recently we've seen a variation added to the toolkit of the fact-checkers which is to simply not fact-check statements made by politicians, individuals and groups they sympathize with.  Why bother going to all the trouble to explain away inaccurate statements when you can just ignore them?

I was prompted to write this after looking at the NY Times and WaPo fact checks on last night's debate.  It turns out that neither fact-checked Joe Biden's statement that no one lost their individual health insurance under Obamacare.

Not only is that statement a lie, but it ties back to the most consequential political lie used to pass a domestic program in American history.  In 2009-2010 during the Obamacare debate, President Obama repeatedly stated, on more than 30 occasions, that if you liked your doctor or your healthplan, you would not lose them under Obamacare.

The truth is that five million Americans lost their plans under Obamacare, including my sister, her husband and their daughter.  Moreover, in 2011, once Obamacare was law and it was safe to tell the truth, the Department of Health & Human Services, in the preamble to a rulemaking, estimated that up to 93 million American could lose their existing coverage once the Cadillac Tax imposed by the law, kicked in (and which I wrote about way back in 2013).  This catastrophe was only averted by Republicans in Congress postponing the deadline for imposition of the tax.

Given the penchant for carefully counting each Trump "lie" in the press, my question is whether President Obama's lie, which had big consequences on millions of Americans, should be counted as 1, 30, 5 million or 93 million?

And, as for Joe Biden's statement and its accuracy it's as if for readers of those publications it has now been certified as true through omission in the fact-check.

That is what I mean by a closed ecosystem in which readers and watchers can be comfortably enmeshed, with their dearest beliefs constantly reinforced, unaware of reality.