Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Media Articles in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of highly revealing media articles from the major media. Links are provided to the full articles on their media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These media articles are listed in reverse date order. You can also explore the articles listed by order of importance or by date posted. By choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word, we can build a brighter future.

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

City council member ÉlĂ©onore Laloux barely fills out her desk chair but her persona and vision outsize any of the Arras giants. "I'm a very committed and dynamic person, and I like to be out working with people," says Ms. Laloux. She's become a household name in Arras and regularly receives congratulations from locals for her dedication to her work. Ms. Laloux is the first and so far only person with Down syndrome to be elected to public office in France. Last year, she was put in charge of inclusion and happiness in Arras, bringing an effervescent energy to city decisions. Alongside Mayor FrĂ©dĂ©ric Leturque, Ms. Laloux has utilized her lived experience and innovative ideas to make sure inclusion and accessibility are a part of every city initiative – from education to transportation to tourism. Ms. Laloux is not just helping the city rethink what inclusion means, but also changing minds about what it's like to live with a disability as well as what those with cognitive disabilities are capable of. "Inclusion isn't something that we just think about; it's not a generous act. It's our duty," says Mr. Leturque, who put forward Ms. Laloux as a candidate last year. "ElĂ©onore has helped the entire town progress in terms of how we see disability." France doesn't take census-type statistics on people with disabilities, but Ms. Laloux is one of the few French people with a visible disability to hold a political position here. Her mere presence has transformed Arras into a model of accessibility and inclusion, and can have an impact on towns across France.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring disabled persons news articles.

Merck is planning to charge Americans 40 times its cost for a Covid drug whose development was subsidized by the American government. Americans are facing not merely expensive drugs but prices that are examples of outright profiteering. In many cases, the medicines we are being gouged on are those that we the public already paid for. These facts show us that pharma-bankrolled Democrats trying to kill drug pricing measures aren't just bought and paid for in this particular skirmish – they are foot soldiers in the pharmaceutical industry's larger multi-decade campaign to seal off and rig America's alleged "free market". A new Public Citizen analysis shows that the 20 top-selling medicines generated almost twice as much pharmaceutical industry revenue in the United States as in every other country combined. For all the pharmaceutical industry's self-congratulatory rhetoric about its own innovations, the federal government uses your tax dollars to fund a lot of that innovation, research and development. A study from the National Academy of Sciences tells that story: the federal government spent $100bn to subsidize the research on every single one of the 200-plus drugs approved for sale in the United States between 2010 and 2016. We now routinely face immoral situations like last week's news that pharmaceutical giant Merck is planning to charge Americans $712 for a Covid drug that cost only $17.74 to produce and whose development was subsidized by the American government.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

Even as the Covid-19 pandemic forced companies around the world to reimagine the workplace, researchers in Iceland were already conducting two trials of a shorter work week that involved about 2,500 workers – more than 1% of the country's working population. They found that the experiment was an "overwhelming success" – workers were able to work less, get paid the same, while maintaining productivity and improving personal well-being. The trials also worked because both employees and employers were flexible, willing to experiment and make changes when something didn't work. In some cases, employers had to add a few hours back after cutting them too much. Participants in the Iceland study reduced their hours by three to five hours per week without losing pay. The shorter work hours have so far largely been adopted in Iceland's public sector. Those who worked in an office had shorter meetings. Fewer sick days were reported. Workers reported having more time to spend with their families and on hobbies. Many appreciated gaining an extra hour of daylight, especially during the winter. Arna Hrönn AradĂłttir, a public-health project manager in Reykjavik's suburbs, was one of the first to trial shorter hours. "I feel like I'm more focused now," said AradĂłttir. "Before the pandemic, I spent a lot of time going to a meeting by car, but now I can sit in my office and have meetings through my computer. So I have gained four hours in my work day."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

On Oct. 4, 2020 ... a group of doctors and medical experts, most of them specialists in epidemiology, immunology, and related public health disciplines, published a statement challenging the wisdom of the widespread COVID-19 lockdowns. The primary authors of the "Great Barrington Declaration" ... were three scientists: Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine at Harvard; Sunetra Gupta, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Oxford; and Jay Bhattacharya, a physician and professor at Stanford Medical School. The declaration ... was soon signed by thousands of additional public health scientists and doctors. "Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health," [it said]. The scientists warned that "keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed." The relatively brief declaration was accompanied by a much more detailed analysis of lockdowns and their collateral damage, and of the best ways to shield the elderly and people in other high-risk groups. For a year, the three scientists have been "vilified." Bhattacharya [said] he is worried for his safety "amid a campaign to censor him on the [Stanford] campus where he has worked for 35 years." The Great Barrington authors were on target in doubting the advisability of sweeping lockdowns. Numerous studies have found that shutting down the economy was largely futile in preventing COVID's spread.

Note: Explore the website of the Great Barrington Declaration. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

This week, San Francisco is expected to once again ease certain indoor mask mandates for portions of the adult population. Noticeably lacking in the new guidance is any update for school and child care mask mandates or even any acknowledgment that kids might also need more normal routines and interactions. Considering they are in peak development years, children need these things even more than adults. There also hasn't been a single COVID-19-related death under the age of 20 in San Francisco. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's COVID-19 risk assessments by age estimate that simply being a child aged five to 17 is 99.9994% protective against the risk of death and 98% protective against hospitalization. Even with this established good news, San Francisco remains an outlier on child mask mandates compared to the vast majority of Europe. The CDC's European counterpart the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control only recommends masking for children ages 12 and up. England ... has never masked children in school. Similarly, Sweden has continued to run school as normal, even during their peak COVID-19 wave. Norway has also never recommended face masks for any age of schooling, while Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands and Switzerland have either never recommended masks on elementary age students or have shifted to no masks for the current school year.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

The popular, once bipartisan idea to hold down Medicare costs is now at the center of President Joe Biden's domestic agenda. Legislation backed by the administration calls for Medicare to mirror other government agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, in being able to negotiate for cheaper medicine through the Part D program. The idea could potentially save the government nearly $500 billion over a decade. The drug pricing proposal could also translate to lower prescription costs across the board. The drug industry, according to its top lobbyist, Stephen Ubl, has made defeating the provision its top priority. Inside the Beltway, the opposition is coming from familiar faces. Many leading Democratic lawmakers and staff have been hired by the drug industry to convince their former colleagues to abandon the drug pricing proposal. Pfizer alone has assembled a lobbying team that includes Dean Aguillen, a former adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Remy Brim, a former health policy adviser to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; and over half a dozen aides to senior Senate Democrats. Ann Jablon, former chief of staff to Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass. ... currently represents several drug companies as a lobbyist, including Amgen Inc., Astellas Pharma, and Bayer. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group that represents the largest drug companies in the world, has also gone on a hiring spree of Democratic lobbyists.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

Synthetic chemicals called phthalates, found in hundreds of consumer products such as food storage containers, shampoo, makeup, perfume and children's toys, may contribute to some 91,000 to 107,000 premature deaths a year among people ages 55 to 64 in the United States, a new study found. People with the highest levels of phthalates had a greater risk of death from any cause, especially cardiovascular mortality, according to the study published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Pollution. Phthalates are known to interfere with the body's mechanism for hormone production, known as the endocrine system, and they are "linked with developmental, reproductive, brain, immune, and other problems," according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Even small hormonal disruptions can cause "significant developmental and biological effects," the NIEHS states. Prior research has connected phthalates with reproductive problems, such as genital malformations and undescended testes in baby boys and lower sperm counts and testosterone levels in adult males. Often called "everywhere chemicals" because they are so common, phthalates are added to consumer products such as PVC plumbing, vinyl flooring, rain- and stain-resistant products, medical tubing, garden hoses, and some children's toys. Other common exposures come from the use of phthalates in food packaging, detergents, clothing, furniture and automotive plastics.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and health from reliable major media sources.

To ward off accusations that it helps terrorists spread propaganda, Facebook has for many years barred users from speaking freely about people and groups it says promote violence. The restrictions appear to trace back to 2012, when ... Facebook added to its Community Standards a ban on "organizations with a record of terrorist or violent criminal activity." This modest rule has since ballooned into what's known as the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, a sweeping set of restrictions on what Facebook's nearly 3 billion users can say about an enormous and ever-growing roster of entities deemed beyond the pale. But as with other attempts to limit personal freedoms in the name of counterterrorism, Facebook's DIO policy has become an unaccountable system that disproportionately punishes certain communities, critics say. It is built atop a blacklist of over 4,000 people and groups, including politicians, writers, charities, hospitals, hundreds of music acts, and long-dead historical figures. A range of legal scholars and civil libertarians have called on the company to publish the list so that users know when they are in danger of having a post deleted or their account suspended for praising someone on it. The company has repeatedly refused to do so, claiming it would endanger employees and permit banned entities to circumvent the policy. The Intercept has reviewed a snapshot of the full DIO list and is today publishing a reproduction of the material in its entirety.

Note: Facebook was found to be the number one platform for political disinformation campaigns in 2019. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media corruption from reliable sources.

When the pandemic began, Gavin, now working as a software engineer, realised, to his inexhaustible joy, that he could get away with doing less work than he had ever dreamed of, from the comfort of his home. He would start at 8.30am and clock off about 11am. To stop his laptop from going into sleep mode – lest his employers check it for activity – Gavin played a 10-hour YouTube video. "I work to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head," he says. "I don't see any value or purpose in work. Zero. None whatsoever." Gavin's job is an unfortunate expediency that facilitates his enjoyment of the one thing that does matter to him in life: his time. "Life is short," Gavin tells me. "I want to enjoy the time I have. We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time." And for now, Gavin is living the good life. He's a time millionaire. First named by the writer Nilanjana Roy in a 2016 column in the Financial Times, time millionaires measure their worth not in terms of financial capital, but according to the seconds, minutes and hours they claw back from employment for leisure and recreation. "Wealth can bring comfort and security in its wake," says Roy. "But I wish we were taught to place as high a value on our time as we do on our bank accounts – because how you spend your hours and your days is how you spend your life." Perhaps time isn't a bank account, but a field. We can grow productive crops, or things of beauty. Or we can simply do nothing, and let the wildflowers grow. Everything is of beauty, everything is of equal value.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

The Metropolitan Police will not take any further action against the Duke of York following a review prompted by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre. Ms Giuffre is suing Prince Andrew in the US for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. Prince Andrew has consistently denied Ms Giuffre's allegations. A source close to the duke told PA Media it had "come as no surprise" the Met had decided to drop its probe. They added: "Despite pressure from the media and claims of new evidence, the Met have concluded that the claims are not sufficient to warrant any further investigation. In August, the Met said it would review its decision not to investigate allegations connected to Epstein. Ms Giuffre, 38, claims she was sexually assaulted by the prince at three locations - London, New York and on Epstein's private island in the Caribbean. Her case claims Prince Andrew engaged in sexual acts without Ms Giuffre's consent, including when she was 17. The Met also confirmed it had completed its review into allegations reported in June by broadcaster Channel 4 News that British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, trafficked, groomed and abused women and girls in the UK. The force said it had "reviewed information passed to us by a media organisation in June" and decided that "no further action will be taken". In August 2019, US financier Epstein was found dead in his cell in New York's Metropolitan Correctional Center.

Note: Once again a major child sex abuse case, in this case that of Jeffrey Epstein, fades from public view with no action taken. This New York magazine report has a wealth of information on Jeffrey Epstein's very strange death. Explore a complex yet very informative timeline of Epstein and his relationship to the Mossad and much more. Many links are made here with verifiable information that the major media has failed to report. For more, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein from reliable major media sources.

After years of declines, America's middle class now holds a smaller share of U.S. wealth than the top 1%. The middle 60% of U.S. households by income ... saw their combined assets drop to 26.6% of national wealth as of June, the lowest in Federal Reserve data going back three decades. For the first time, the super rich had a bigger share, at 27%. The data offer a window into the slow-motion erosion in the financial security of mid-tier earners. That continued through the Covid-19 pandemic, despite trillions of dollars in government relief. While "middle class" has different meanings to different people, many economists use income to define the group. The 77.5 million families in the middle 60% make about $27,000 to $141,000 annually, based on Census Bureau data. Their share in three main categories of assets - real estate, equities and private businesses - slumped in one generation. That made their lives more precarious, with fewer financial reserves to fall back on when they lose their jobs. The top 1% represents about 1.3 million households who roughly make more than $500,000 a year - out of a total of almost 130 million. Over the past 30 years, 10 percentage points of American wealth has shifted to the top 20% of earners, who now hold 70% of the total, Fed data show. A generation ago, the middle class held more than 44% of real estate assets in the country. Now it's down to 38%. The pandemic ... led to soaring rents this year, which hurt those who can't afford a house.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on income inequality from reliable major media sources.

The New York Times (NYT) issued a correction to one of its stories this week, which significantly overstated the number of U.S. children who have been hospitalized for COVID-19. The article discussed how countries were moving to "revisit the one-dose strategy" due to concerns over health data suggesting myocarditis was more common in children who receive the COVID-19 vaccine than previously thought. The U.S. has not changed its guidance on the issue since June. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted that month to recommend the vaccine for children older than 12 because "the benefits far outweighed the risk." The NYT used the misstated statistic as background information meant to describe the extent of COVID-19's effect on U.S. children. The Oct. 7 correction read: "The article also misstated the number of Covid hospitalizations in U.S. children. It is more than 63,000 from August 2020 to October 2021, not 900,000 since the beginning of the pandemic." Other errors from the article were also discussed in the correction placed at the end of the article. Those errors include incorrectly describing "actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark," who halted the use of pharmaceutical manufacturer Moderna's vaccine for children. The NYT reported the two countries had only halted booster shots, not the vaccine entirely. The article also misstated the timing of a Food and Drug Administration meeting on the authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children.

Note: These corrections are generally issued as a footnote, which practically no one reads. Note that the original article overstated the number of children hospitalized by nearly 1,500%. How could the respected "newspaper of record" get such important information so wrong? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and mass media from reliable sources.

After collecting hundreds of wishes the past year and a half on the trees outside her home, a La Jolla resident is sending her "wishing trees" into hibernation. Molly Bowman-Styles began her wishing trees in May 2020 as a response to the first weeks of isolation brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. "One morning I woke up and I thought, ‘This is awful," she said of the pandemic and the concurrent, unrelated illnesses of her father and dog. "I just felt so disconnected and out of sorts." Bowman-Styles said she looked for a way to "feel connected to other people but at the same time help them to express how they're feeling through all this, because I know I'm not alone." She looked through her windows at her trees and had the idea to hang colorful index cards in leftover envelopes from the branches, with markers and paper clips to enable passersby to write on the cards and rehang them. "I wrote on the envelopes, ‘Make a wish for our world' and ‘Share a message of hope,'" Bowman-Styles said. And many people did. "I was excited, because in the morning I'd wake up and I had more cards and I read each and every one of them," Bowman-Styles said. In the first few weeks the cards were hung, Bowman-Styles lost both her father and dog. "I cannot tell you how [the trees] helped me so much with my grief," she said. Bowman-Styles said one of her favorite cards, written by a child during the divisive 2020 presidential election, read, "I love everybody."

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Brittany Walters made a promise to her mother the day she passed away from cancer: Brittany and her father would go to homecoming, where the high school senior was nominated for queen. Walters, who aspires to become a nurse, didn't win homecoming queen that night, but thanks to an act of kindness that has shined a healing light on a grieving family and community, she ended the night in a crown. Senior Nyla Covington was voted homecoming queen by fellow students at a school football game in late September. But moments after being crowned, [she] felt called to crown someone else. After asking permission from school officials to do so, Covington walked over to Walters, standing beside her cowboy hat-clad father, and put the crown on her. "I just felt like it was something that was put on my heart," Covington told CNN. "It was really just for her, to bring up her day a little bit, and she'd rather have her mom than a crown... but the point was, I was telling her that she was her mom's queen and I was just letting her know that she was loved by many and especially me." "I just felt so like so much love from her, and I just felt so much love for her and the whole school," Walters said of Covington. "As soon as I got off the field, I just got hundreds of hugs from every single person in the stands." There were tears on and off the field. Forrest County AHS School's principal Will Wheat tells CNN he is proud of the young women. "That wasn't preplanned, this was all on the kids, that's the beautiful thing about it," Wheat said.

Note: Watch a short video on this beautiful act of compassion that also crossed races as Covington is black and Walters is white. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Depression among adults in the United States tripled in the early 2020 months of the global coronavirus pandemic–jumping from 8.5 percent before the pandemic to a staggering 27.8 percent. New research from Boston University School of Public Health reveals that the elevated rate of depression has persisted into 2021, and even worsened, climbing to 32.8 percent and affecting 1 in every 3 American adults. The study is the first nationally representative study in the US that examines the change in depression prevalence before and then during the pandemic. Published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health–Americas, the study found that the most significant predictors for if a person experienced depressive symptoms during the pandemic were low household income, not being married, and experiencing multiple pandemic-related stressors. "The sustained high prevalence of depression does not follow [the same] patterns [we observed] after previous traumatic events, such as Hurricane Ike," says study senior author Sandro Galea. "Typically, we would expect depression to peak following the traumatic event and then lower over time. Instead, we found that 12 months into the pandemic, levels of depression remained high." The burden of depression intensified over the course of the pandemic and disproportionately impacted adults with lower incomes. By spring 2021, low-income adults were 7 times more likely to experience [elevated depressive] symptoms.

Note: Note that this huge increase in depression was caused not directly by the pandemic, but more by the isolation of the lockdown measures instituted. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and health from reliable major media sources.

Clergy members in the Roman Catholic Church in France sexually abused more than 200,000 minors over the past seven decades, according to an estimate published on Tuesday by an independent commission that concluded the problem was far more pervasive than previously known. The long-awaited 2,500-page report by the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church laid out in detail how the church hierarchy had repeatedly silenced the victims and failed to report or discipline the clergy members involved. "The church failed to see or hear, failed to pick up on the weak signals, failed to take the rigorous measures that were necessary," Jean-Marc Sauvé, the commission president, said. For years, the church showed a "deep, total and even cruel indifference toward victims," he added. There has been a growing reckoning with sexual abuse in the church in France after a series of high-profile scandals. The investigative commission was set up in 2018 at the request of the Catholic Church in France in response to criticism of its handling of abuse cases. The findings were the most extensive account to date of the scope of sexual abuse by clergy in the country. About 216,000 minors, mostly boys ages 10 to 13, have been abused by clergy members in France since 1950, according to an estimate by the commission. The figure reached 330,000 after including perpetrators who were laypeople and worked for the church or were affiliated with it, such as Boy Scout organizers or Catholic school staff.

Note: And this CNN article is titled "Up to 3,200 pedophiles worked in French Catholic Church since 1950, independent commission says." For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

A five-day course of molnupiravir, the new medicine being hailed as a "huge advance" in the treatment of Covid-19, costs $17.74 to produce, according to a report issued last week by drug pricing experts at the Harvard School of Public Health and King's College Hospital in London. Merck is charging the U.S. government $712 for the same amount of medicine, or 40 times the price. Like the vast majority of medicines on the market, molnupiravir – which was originally investigated as a possible treatment for Venezuelan equine encephalitis – was developed using government funds. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency, a division of the Department of Defense, provided more than $10 million of funding in 2013 and 2015 to Emory University, as research done by the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International has revealed. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, also provided Emory with more than $19 million in additional grants. Yet only Merck and Ridgeback will reap the profits from the new antiviral, which ... could bring in as much as $7 billion by the end of this year. After the announcement of the encouraging clinical trial results on Friday, Merck's stock price climbed. Good government advocates are pointing out that because federal agencies spent at least $29 million on the drug's development, the government has the obligation to ensure that the medicine is affordable.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus and Big Pharma profiteering from reliable major media sources.

Twitter has been slammed for fact-checking the obituary of a Seattle mother that attributed her death to blood clots brought on by the COVID-19 vaccine after she was forced to get the shot due to "heavy-handed" state mandates. The online obituary for 37-year-old Jessica Berg Wilson, who died Sept. 7, was marked as "misleading" by the social media giant over the weekend. The fact-check warning was removed by Twitter on Monday morning following the backlash. The tribute ... said the mother of two died from "COVID-19 Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia" – a rare blood disorder that can occur in some cases after the vaccine. Wilson had been "vehemently opposed" to getting the vaccine because she was in good health, but she eventually relented after Washington state made it mandatory for teachers and those wanting to volunteer in schools, her obituary said. "During the last weeks of her life, however, the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates. Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom." The social media giant fact-checked the obituary after it was shared by Twitter user Kelly Bee alongside a tweet that read: "Jessica Berg Wilson, an ‘exceptionally healthy and vibrant 37-year-old young mother with no underlying health conditions,' passed away from COVID Vaccine-Induced Thrombotic Thrombocytopenia. She did not want to get vaccinated."

Note: Learn lots more about this tragedy in this article. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles coronavirus vaccines and media manipulation from reliable major media sources.

Frances Haugen spent 15 years working for some of the largest social media companies in the world including Google, Pinterest, and until May, Facebook. Haugen quit Facebook on her own accord and left with thousands of pages of internal research and communications that she shared with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 60 Minutes obtained the documents from a Congressional source. On Sunday, in her first interview, Haugen told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley about what she called "systemic" problems with the platform's ranking algorithm that led to the amplification of "angry content" and divisiveness. Evidence of that, she said, is in the company's own internal research. Haugen said Facebook changed its algorithm in 2018 to promote "what it calls meaningful social interactions" through "engagement-based rankings." She explained that content that gets engaged with – such as reactions, comments, and shares – gets wider distribution. "Political parties have been quoted, in Facebook's own research, saying, we know you changed how you pick out the content that goes in the home feed," said Haugen. "And now if we don't publish angry, hateful, polarizing, divisive content, crickets." "We have no independent transparency mechanisms," Haugen [said]. "Facebook ... picks metrics that are in its own benefit. And the consequence is they can say we get 94% of hate speech and then their internal documents say we get 3% to 5% of hate speech. We can't govern that."

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on media manipulation from reliable sources.

COVID-19 is once again in retreat. The reasons remain somewhat unclear. "This is as good as the world has looked in many months," Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research wrote. The most encouraging news is that the most serious forms of COVID are also declining. The number of Americans hospitalized with COVID has fallen about 25% since Sept. 1. Daily deaths ... have fallen 10% since Sept. 20. It is the first sustained decline in deaths since early summer. These declines are consistent with a pattern that readers will recognize: COVID's mysterious two-month cycle. Since the COVID virus began spreading in late 2019, cases have often surged for about two months – sometimes because of a variant, such as delta – and then declined for about two months. Public health researchers do not understand why. Many popular explanations – such as seasonality or the ebbs and flows of mask wearing and social distancing – are clearly insufficient, if not wrong. The two-month cycle has occurred during different seasons of the year and occurred even when human behavior was not changing in obvious ways. The most-plausible explanations involve some combination of virus biology and social networks. Human behavior does play a role, with people often becoming more careful once caseloads begin to rise. But social distancing is not as important as public discussion of the virus often imagines. "We've ascribed far too much human authority over the virus," as Michael Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert ... has said.

Note: Isn't it interesting that both masks and vaccines have had no clear impact on these cycles? For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.