Lies, More Lies and Damned Media Lies

On this episode of Lies, Media Critic Dennis Broe talks to HBO and Netflix Stand-Up Comic Leighann Lord about whether comedy in the age of Trump is possible. On “Media Watch” we look at Hilary Clinton’s going along to get along with turning Gaza into beachfront property while on “Narrative Watch” Leighann talks about resisting attempts to hit the social media “anger button” while Dennis debunks a “little boys story” of escape to the “freedom of the West.” We conclude with how Widow’s Bay and Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed look askance at tourism including Ivanka and Jared’s Fantasy Island and how resisting being a modern Stepford Wife still leads to trouble.

Independent journalist Jalyssa discusses the media coverage, or rather the lack of in-depth and contextual coverage of the massacre in Lebanon and how mainstream media is awash in superficiality. Media Critic Dennis recounts how, paraphrasing Goebbels, Trump and Netanyahu have never met a negotiation they didn't want to sabotage. Times Watch takes up the difference between the Eastern hordes "seizing" jewels and the West "acquiring" them as well as the extravagant coverage of the Bezos' Met Gala while forgetting to cover the arrest of Amazon Union Organizer Chris Smalls outside the blessed event. Finally, we break down two action series, one U.S., the other South African, where the first is highly individualized with the hero defending or revenging a spoilt condo in Rio and the second more collectively-aligned with the hero protecting a shelter in Cape Town and building a community around him. 

In this episode, Media critic Dennis Broe and on-location Journalist Jalyssa Dugrot explore the ramifications of an ill-thought out war damaging civilians in the Middle East and consumers on the U.S. homefront. Jalyssa reports from Lebanon about the random Israeli bombing as the city of Beirut is itself threatened with being turned into Gaza. Dennis recounts how Trump and his cronies are benefitting from the war, regardless of the consequences for. the rest of the world which will take a long time to recover from it. Times Watch desribes the newspaper gushing over a disastrous 10-person "Cuban Invasion" while French papers vilify the actual left in that country while opening the route for a dangerous advance by the Lepenist far-right. All this and insurance fraud as the only way out for a working-class on the ropes. 

Media critic Dennis Broe and Journalist Jalyssa Dugrot ask if truth, the first casualty in war, is in this war a fatality. They recount Larry Ellison's "media coup," now grabbing CNN along with CBS and Tik Tok and look at the similarities in the cable stations which span the political spectrum from the spectrum "A" to "A'." Jalyssa's "Narrative Watch" looks at the managing of the war as "strategic incompetence" gives way to plain old incompetence. "Times Watch" looks at The New York Times torn between dictatorship and democracy in South Korea and then we look at two contemporary horror films, Send Help and Scream 7 to see how their desensitisation fits with the bombing. 

In this episode with "Bro and DuGro Goin' At The News,"  Dennis and Jalyssa unpack the media coverup of the Epstein revelations, including the mainstream news' sins of omission and the House of Trump's "strategic incompetence." On Narrative Watch, Jalyssa discusses the strategic ambiguity around the Ghislaine Maxwell testimony and on Times Watch Dennis looks at the fawning coverage of, one of the laziest men in America, the Shah who would be king, and the NFL"s real reason for the Bad Bunny Superbowl halftime. We conclude with a breakdown of two TV series, High Potential and Blue Murder Motel where the trampling on suspect's rights and the hilarity never stops, even as it spills over into current protests. 

Lies, More Lies and Damned Media Lies: Bro and DuGro Goin' At The News 

In our pilot episode Mint Press Journalist Jalyssa provides a first-hand account of the protests in Minneapolis. Is it a pre-revolutionary situation? What is flashbanging and why this heightened level of violence against the protestors? Media Critic Dennis in Times Watch describes the newspapers puff piece on the German Chancellor Merz, a kinder, gentler Nazi and we look at the paper's referring to Mamdani as "affordability obsessed," and its trumpeting tech bro tax dodgers as they flee California and as the Times champions AI's deskilling of students in the classroom.