“CEO said a thing!” journalism

It is at least entertaining when certain CEOs speak off-the-cuff and reveal they have no clue what they are talking about.

Jensen thinks DLSS 5 works at "the geometry level", for instance. Oh and he pays engineers $500,000 to spend $250,000 on Claude tokens.

The thing this article does not cover is that the average journalist has no sway. Most readers don't want the opinion of some random person covering a space, so "CEO Said a Thing" is the headline that draws the reader in. Many times the journalist also is not getting paid enough to inject any sort of counterpoint or unique perspective. This just seems like the natural outcome of the click-whoring online "news" structure we've created.

Reaction-baiting (or -bating depending on your perspective) really has ruined most discourse. There a direct line to advertising and social media.

I'm confident this phenomenon exists in other industries too.

Is there a term that's equivalent to "reactionary" but applies to leftist/liberal ideals or is it fine for me to start referring to this kind of writing as "reactionary" save that I apply some sort of qualifier like "leftist" or "liberal" before or afterwards?

I've come to the conclusion recently that if a tech CEO is pushing for something , it's probably something normal people should be fighting against. To the point where "Elon/Mark/Jensen/Peter wants society to do [thing]" is a pretty strong signal that [thing] is actually a terrible idea.

Now this was an article where I didn't even need to read the article. The headline was all I needed to know it has all the same complaints I do.

The worst is "Jony Ive said"

Uncritically regurgitating what sources tell you is not journalism. It's too lazy to rise to the level of propaganda. It's more like writing them a press release for free.

Naturally media are on the side of money.

This is ultimately a consequence of the attention economy, which is absolutely harmful for most everyone in the long term, with the exception of, you know, Elon, Sam, Mark and the like.

Like media reporting about Trump. Trump is a (mostly) fake-news generator. The problem is that the traditional media is largely structued to suit different goals, often the owner (make more money), in part to send out a certain narrative (propaganda). Or both.

I don't have a good work-around for this either. I try to gather news from different sources and use my brain, but even then my brain is influenced a lot by what information is given. Youtube is kind of great and awful here; great because you may have critical content (e. g. I like Vlad Vexler's thinking and reasoning, even if I may not always agree with the rationale, analysis, premise or outcome), but there is also soooo much propaganda on youtube. Tons of parrots repeating a certain narrative. Peter Zeihan is my personal disfavourite right now (the recent "How to Break Iran" is pure propaganda IMO) but there are so many more examples, influencers too. One day I'll need to disconnect myself from youtube (and, in the process, Google); right now I admit I am too addicted to some of it (the content, not the platform; the platform pisses me off. It is not even usable anymore without ublock origin).

Also "some minority group is concerned about something" journalism.

Elon Musk is an "unremarkable white supremacist"? Come on.