Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date Also advise to: The world has gone mad. (Although to be fair to the murderous douchebags, this was on March 16, so they were ahead of some major nations in this regard.)
First a definition... I assume you will accept one from the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/feb/08/what-is-astroturfing Now you have quoted an opinion piece from Charles Moore and another from James Bartholomew. That isn't astroturfing at all by the definition above.. That's conventional journalism - they are expression their opinion under their own name.
Nexxo's examples may not fall within a strict dictionary definition of 'astroturfing', but those poisonous diatribes don't exactly fall within a strict dictionary definition of 'journalism': https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
What will happen with new film releases if cinemas remain closed? Was looking forward to a few biggies this Summer. Will they be made available online, does anybody know? EDIT: just checked Top Gun 2 and it's been pushed to December.
An example might be something like Trolls 2, which had a "home rental" release a couple of weeks ago.
By 'strict' I assume you mean 'in any way similar'. As for the articles, perhaps you should have read them. What I took from them was that while they had no issue with the work of the NHS personnel, they were both arguing that the why the NHS is organised is not automatically the best possible way of delivering healthcare in the world at the moment. Is that "poisonous" or within the bounds of civilised debate?
This is a non-sequitur. You pointed out that the two articles Nexxo cited aren't astroturfing, according to the definition of 'astroturfing', and claimed that they are instead journalism. My counter-argument is that according to the definition of journalism they are not journalism either. Describing the articles as 'poisonous diatribes' is most certainly a biased opinion, but it doesn't change the fact that they are not journalism. You can't criticise someone's argument for using terms/words in a way that is not in accordance with their definition and then fail to apply the same standards to your own argument. To be perfectly frank, I'm not going to discuss the content of those two articles. I read through the first few paragraphs of each and that was enough; I don't have the time or the patience to read through opinion pieces which I profoundly disagree with. I am perfectly free to not even read them without undermining the validity of the assertion that, according to the definition of the word, they are not journalism and are instead opinion columns.
Since you ask, I think it is poisonous. Both articles are trying to attribute the struggles of the NHS in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis to structural and organisational failures rather than: - 10 years of systematic, chronic underfunding; - the failure by government to act on the recommendations of the 2016 cygnus pandemic exercise; - the failure by government to respond in a timely fashion to the current pandemic. The reason why? To abdicate the government from any blame, of course, and to (continue to) turn public opinion against the NHS and in favour of privatised healthcare --which no doubt, like Brexit, will be sold in its referendum campaign as a quite reasonable model in the vein of the mainland European Bismarckian social insurance system (which actually is closer to Beveridge's NHS than people assume), but in reality will turn out to be rather like the American private healthcare system come NHSexit day.
Journalism = Reporting what is going on without mixing in your own opinion. Opinion pieces = Antithesis of Journalism due to being designed for the sole purpose of telling you what to think about the stories reported on.
In fact, it's gone negative now. Meanwhile, I just finished William Gibson's new novel Agency: Yeah... pretty prescient, considering he finished the novel in July 2019.
Hey, in four years they can campaign on "Last chance to save the NHS!" Did you say that at some other points in the past? More seriously it seems rather chauvinistic to assume that absolutely everything done in the NHS here is better that all the other healthcare systems ever tried ("the envy of the world" as it is normally put) and we have nothing to learn from any of them except the need to increase funding.
And the Facepalm award of the day goes to Karen. Congratulation, Karen, you're a living dumpster fire.
All it comes down to is this - Healthcare as a right, or healthcare as a financial privilege. I'm sure there are enviable procedures available to the super-rich in other countries but to continue the theme of William Gibson quotes, consider this one: "The future is already here - It's just not very evenly distributed"
