Showing posts with label mainstream media distracted by Trump gambits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mainstream media distracted by Trump gambits. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

QOTD -- The Media Challenge


"...[T]he challenge to the mainstream press runs deeper than rendering Trump’s law and order propaganda in honest terms. Trump’s commitment to mass deception as a campaign tactic is exclusive and total. Not one of his central appeals to voters, or his in-progress schemes to manipulate them, is rooted in truth. Not his claims about his pre-coronavirus economic record; not his handling of the economy in the wake of the pandemic, nor of the pandemic itself; not his efforts to undo the Russia investigation, or persecute its investigators; not his absentee-voting disinformation or his feigned ignorance of sabotage at the Postal Service; not his claim to being “tough on China” or to “draining the swamp” or to protecting pre-existing conditions protections. The notion that he embodies law and order is just as topsy turvy, but news outlets have nevertheless allowed him to dictate the tenor of their coverage of civic unrest to them. If professional journalists respond to the challenge of a president campaigning on fiction by pretending, for the sake of argument, that it’s truth, then the media failures of 2020 will outstrip the media failures of 2016, which nearly destroyed the country."  -- Brian Beutler, in "The Media Fails Its Biggest Trump 2020 Test."  Beutler calls out some repeat 2016/2020 offenders like the New York Effing Times and Associated Press.  To be sure there are media outlets -- print, cable and broadcast -- that usually fact- check in real time when they present stories about Trump (muted kudos to the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and ABC News for starters). 

Not recognizing and reporting the peril we face from Trump and his corrupt, rotted out party won't be just a media oops or an "honest mistake" this time around.  It could usher in an even darker and possibly final chapter in our nation's history.
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Friday, May 15, 2020

Tweets Of The Day -- Distractiongate


Trump's Coronavirus Great Depression must rattling him badly if  he's a desperate enough dolt to poke a murder hornets nest, a.k.a. the most popular politician in America.   But, in the spirit of "forewarned is forearmed":















And, finally,


BONUS:  The Washington Post has an explainer about "unmasking."

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Saturday, January 18, 2020

Truth, Not Balance


The Washington Post's Margaret Sullivan writes about the two "big stories" recently dominating mainstream media reporting, only one of which merits the coverage -- one being the "feud" between Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and the other being the latest revelations of Trump's knowledge and participation in the Ukraine shakedown scandal.  We know which was the more important, by far, to the health and survival of our democracy.  But, as Sullivan notes, the lack of a sense of proportion is missing, as it often is in news coverage involving the historically corrupt, venal and dangerous Trump regime.  The default for the media is to normalize Trump's abnormalities, as reporting on his crazed Nuremberg rallies has proven.

This lack of truth and proportion is, Sullivan writes, something Trump (and his rotted- out party) depends on:
The widespread lack of news literacy and basic civics is something that Trump depends upon. (“I love the poorly educated,” he crowed in early 2016 after winning the Nevada primary.) Or as Ohio-based columnist Connie Schultz wrote recently: “Nothing scares Trump more than informed voters.”
The mainstream news media may not see the obligation to break through citizens’ lack of knowledge.
They may not see their role as educating, or getting across what’s important but complicated in an understandable, clear way.
It’s easier — and probably more profitable — to play to people’s prejudices or lowest instincts.
This was true most recently in the 2016 election cycle, with "reporting" in the New York Times and Sullivan's own WaPo throwing proportion out the window in covering the nothingburger "scandal" of Hillary Clinton's email server, while Trump's glaring, disqualifying flaws were shoved to the background.  The asymmetry was widespread in the media (click on image to enlarge):



None of this is new and none of this will go away in 2020.  The distractions will be different, of course, but the media will be played (and go along with it) because, as pointed out above, it's more profitable "to play to people's prejudices or lowest instincts."  Even when the media is reporting on Trump's criminality and incompetence, it's often well after the fact (and sometimes as a result of a book deal, as Tengrain notes with the "Very Stable Genius" book by WaPo reporters, revealing events from 2017 that they sat on until they could be teased out to goose book sales).

Although we hate to close with a tweet from a former Bush assministration flunky turned Never Trumper turned independent, this reproach on how the media allows liars to operate is right on --



Sullivan says the public needs the media to do much better.  Don't count on that happening.  Change will be up to us.

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Monday, July 15, 2019

Monday Reading


As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Charles Blow reacts to white nationalist dimbulb Donald "Rump" Trump's racist tweetstorm on Sunday:
... There can be no more discussion or debate about whether or not Trump is a racist. He is. There can be no more rhetorical juggling about not knowing what’s in his heart. We see what flows out of it.
White people and whiteness are the center of the Trump presidency. His primary concern is to defend, protect and promote it. All that threatens it must be attacked and assaulted. Trump is bringing the force of the American presidency to the rescue of white supremacy. And, self-identified Republicans absolutely love him for it.
We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation’s history unfold in real time. We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens — possibly a third of them — reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him.  (our emphasis)
Goldie Taylor says it plain and simple:
Trump is not a fine person. His words Sunday were not racially “charged,” “fueled,” or “tinged.” They were unapologetically racist.
And, if you support him, so are you.
The rotted out Republican Party has also once again revealed itself, through its silence, as the Trump Party of white nationalism.  (Hell, even UK Prime Minister Theresa May called him out.)

If there ever was a timely reminder who and what Democrats are fighting against, this is it.

Kyle Pope discusses how Trump manipulates the media, the latest example being the ICE show raids, to distract from unpleasant headlines or failures -- and how the media should respond:
Unfortunately, for a press corps engineered to serve up heart-pulling melodramas, all of this will likely prove too juicy to ignore. We’ll watch the horror show, and then we will be subject to panel discussions about the latest partisan “controversy,” with Trump strolling out jut-jawed to declare his toughness on the border, while Democrats and human rights activists loudly protest the raids as immoral and unjustified. Who’s in the right?, the media will ask. Who knows? [snip]
What makes this all so difficult for reporters is that Trump’s actions can not be dismissed as media gambits; the drama unfolding merits urgent attention. Odds are that there will be even more pain as a result of Sunday’s raids. Journalism’s job must be to frame the immigration crackdown as a campaign event—not a policy response—that claims lives as collateral damage. Trump’s manipulation of a crisis is the point. That is the heartbreaking story that needs to be told.  (our emphasis)
Speaking of unpleasant headlines, today is the day sex predator and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has his bail hearing. Stretching credulity, his lawyers want him released on bail and restricted to his Upper East Side $77 million mansion wearing a GPS monitor.  But,
Prosecutors are not buying those arguments.
They said in court filings that Epstein's wealth makes him a major flight risk, as he owns a private jet as well as six homes, including a private island in the US Virgin Islands. The plan proposed by Epstein's attorneys is "little more than a barely-secured bond masquerading as a 14-point plan," prosecutors said.
They argued that his proposal to use the home as collateral is pointless because the government is seeking to seize the property if he is convicted. They also dismissed his offer to agree to extradition in any country as "unenforceable," and they said electronic monitoring would do little but "merely give the defendant less of a head start in fleeing," according to the court filing.
Further, prosecutors said Epstein could use his wealth to tamper with the investigation -- and has a history of doing just that.
Meanwhile, the case of Trump rape victim E. Jean Carroll may not be over:
“I hadn’t thought about pressing charges, but now people are convincing me that it's smart,” she told The Daily Beast. “If I get a really smart attorney, we might be able to get around [the statute]. I’ll be exploring it.”
The attorney would have to find a way around New York state law, which lifted the statute of limitations on rape years after Trump's assault occurred.

If there was justice in the world, Epstein's sex predator partying pal Trump would be in an adjoining cell right now.

We close, as always, with our strong recommendation to go over to Infidel 753's link round- up, which seems to offer even more great links week upon week.

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