Media credibility in the age of Trump

[Sunday21]

On 3/29/2019 at 8:29 AM, Midwest LDS said:

I agree with you about the impeachment idea especially. It's almost as if many on the far left seem to have forgotten that having to impeach a president is a horrendous thing for the country to go through (see Nixon), and act like it would be something to celebrate. Plus it's amazing that many in the country who should understand how the government works, don't seem to understand that you need the House and 2/3 of the Senate to remove a president. The Republicans were unable to get a supermajority to remove President Andrew Johnson, one of the worst presidents in history, even with extremely favorable political conditions, and you are not going to get 2/3 of the Senate on board in this climate.

Could not agree more! Can CNN and NBC possibly be that stupid? Do they really not understand how impeachment works? Do they not get that there is a country to run and that having politicians focused on impeachment rather than running the country is an extremely dangerous distraction? If you do not like the party or president in power, start working on the next election.

Focusing on impeachment because an unpleasant person has been elected is childish. Get over it. You lost the election. Move on.

I stopped watching CNN and NBC. I feel insulted by their lack of respect for the intelligence of their viewers. 

[Sunday21]

On 3/29/2019 at 9:47 AM, JohnsonJones said:

course the counterpoint that everyone ignores, but it is BLATANT is that the UK was DEEPLY involved in meddling with the election

What! Please explain.

[Sunday21]

On 3/29/2019 at 1:55 PM, Scott said:

It's more complicated than that.  It has only been like that since the Iraq War.

Bush I was fairly popular throughout most of the world.  Clinton was fairly popular as well.  Bush II was actually popular before the Iraq War.  After the Iraq War, favorability towards the US went way down among most of our allies.    Much of the world felt lied to concerning the reasons for the invasion and further the war did not go well.  It caused a lot of instability and refugees poured into a lot of countries that were our allies.  Favorability increased under Obama, but has once again dropped under Trump for various reasons, this time not related to the Iraq War.

Had the Iraq War not happened, or at least had it gone well, we wouldn't be seeing the same trends.  

 

Give Bush II his due. He saved the International Banking system by bailing out the banks. We owe him.

[JohnsonJones]

8 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

What! Please explain.

You know where the Steele dossier originated from in the first place?  Right?

USA Today 12/18/18  Soem Steele Dossier claims likely false

Quote

But he said when "you actually get into the details of the Steel dossier, the specific allegations, we have no tseen the evidence to support them, and, in fact, there's good grounds to think that some of hte more sensational allegations will never be proven and are likely false."

It's a mixed record at best," he said.  "Things could change.  Mueller may yet produce evidence that changes this calculation but based on the public record at this point, I'd have to say that most of the specific allegations have not been borne out."

Steele was actually originally an MI-6 (actually the head of the Russian Investigations) and most likely still is a useful plant to give information they want as they want it. 

It was the basis in many ways for the investigation that, thus far, after two years, has turned up nothing on Trump.

Add to that numerous British celebrities (the most famous probably being J.K. Rowling) having deeply invested commentary onto US politics (but conveniently ignoring their own in many instances...almost as if it was a directed campaign) and trying to influence US citizens to act and vote in certain ways it can be seen that the impact of the British influence on the US elections cannot really be denied.  In fact, it may be more significant in impact than most US media and publications that are available in the US!

Edited March 31, 2019 by JohnsonJones

[Sunday21]

20 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

You know where the fake dossier originated from in the first place?  Right?

Fake dossier? Now before we go down this road....what publication are we quoting from? Standard news organization? Economist, New York Times, Atlantic, WSJ? If not, let’s drop the subject. By the way I no longer consider CNN, NBC or Fox to be journalists. 

[JohnsonJones]

7 minutes ago, Sunday21 said:

Fake dossier? Now before we go down this road....what publication are we quoting from? Standard news organization? Economist, New York Times, Atlantic, WSJ? If not, let’s drop the subject. By the way I no longer consider CNN, NBC or Fox to be journalists. 

I revised it. 

Added a quote above.  The best misleading information is typically one which is mostly truthful, but with just enough to lead someone down the path that you want them to head towards.

The one Dossier has caused more conflict and disarray in US politics than any Russian media campaign has thus done. 

A prime example is trying to connect certain proclivities of Trump to Russians rather than a more verifiable source (again, from the USA today article...and USA today is HARDLY a conservative rag...more of a liberal newspaper today for America).

Quote

"The irony here is Steel may be right but it wasn't the Kremlin that had the sexual kompromat on Donald Trump, it was the National Enquirer," Isikoff said.  He added that Pecker could be a key witness for House Democrats when they take control of that chamber next month.

Misleads such as this leads people down a road which led to discord in the US government.  Pointing it at the Enquirer could have caused difficulties (and when it came out, it DID cause some uproar), but nothing as close to the entire Russia fiasco that has embroiled many to call for Trumps impeachment even before he took office.

A situation that as the truth has slowly come out, has become less and less likely that any impeachment will ever come out about any involvement between Trump and the Russian Government (though I still feel he has connections to the Russian Mob) due to lack of evidence.  He still may be impeached, but it is unlikely going to be over items that the Steele Dossier misled many into thinking were facts when in fact they were not, and though some of it may have some truth, some of it also did not have enough verifiable evidence to prove anything.

Edited March 31, 2019 by JohnsonJones

[Guest MormonGator]

20 hours ago, Sunday21 said:

Give Bush II his due. He saved the International Banking system by bailing out the banks. We owe him.

W is over critiqued (whatever his flaws, he was a highly decent man who helped unite the country after 9/11), but he made a grave mistake with his bailouts. 

[Midwest LDS]

53 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

W is over critiqued (whatever his flaws, he was a highly decent man who helped unite the country after 9/11), but he made a grave mistake with his bailouts. 

Yep the 2004 election was the first time I was able to vote. Despite his flaws, I'm still glad I voted for W, he was a really good man.

[Guest MormonGator]

11 minutes ago, Midwest LDS said:

Yep the 2004 election was the first time I was able to vote. Despite his flaws, I'm still glad I voted for W, he was a really good man.

Liar. You told me you voted for Lyndon LaRouche. 

[Traveler]

1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

W is over critiqued (whatever his flaws, he was a highly decent man who helped unite the country after 9/11), but he made a grave mistake with his bailouts. 

Interesting use of flaws and mistakes.  I consider a flaw as something that you do because you have been given false or misleading information and a mistake is when you do something without doing due diligence to validate your opinion in the matter.  What we should have learned - looking back is that not only is our public news most susceptible to "fake news" but so also is our professional intelligence organizations.   What we do not know is if such organizations were incapable of gathering accurate information or if they deliberately and knowingly misleading the populus.  Which ever it is - it would seem that there is no effort to correct what is being done.

 

The Traveler

Edited April 1, 2019 by Traveler

[Midwest LDS]

13 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

Liar. You told me you voted for Lyndon LaRouche. 

It's true. I only like to back a winner. I also voted for Stassen once😉

[Guest MormonGator]

21 minutes ago, Traveler said:

Interesting use of flaws and mistakes.  I consider a flaw as something that you do because you have been given false or misleading information and a mistake is when you do something without doing due diligence to validate your opinion in the matter.  What we should have learned - looking back is that not only is our public news most susceptible to "fake news" but so also is our professional intelligence organizations.   What we do not know is if such organizations were incapable of gathering accurate information or if they deliberately and knowingly misleading the populus.  Which ever it is - it would seem that there is no effort to correct what is being done.

 

The Traveler

What? 

[Traveler]

4 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

What? 

Okay - I will try again.  A mistake is something you do because you do not know to do better.  A flaw is something you do because you are incapable of doing better (even if you know what is better) because you do not want to do better.

 

The Traveler

[Colirio]

15 hours ago, MormonGator said:

What? 

 

HE SAID, "INTERESTING USE OF FLAWS AND MISTAKES." 

[Vort]

28 minutes ago, Colirio said:

HE SAID, "INTERESTING USE OF FLAWS AND MISTAKES." 

Reply of the Day.

[anatess2]

On 3/31/2019 at 7:24 AM, Sunday21 said:

Fake dossier? Now before we go down this road....what publication are we quoting from? Standard news organization? Economist, New York Times, Atlantic, WSJ? If not, let’s drop the subject. By the way I no longer consider CNN, NBC or Fox to be journalists. 

It's not just the UK.  It's Australia too.

Okay, there's the Steele Dossier... you know about that, right?  Christopher Steele, British Agent?  (this one is a locust nest all on its own)

But that's not all.  There's also the Papadapoulos affair.  https://spectator.org/the-papadopoulos-affair-such-a-downer/

Let's see if this infographic is legible.  UK Intel is top right.

[unixknight]

The thing I'm noticing with the way the media has been reacting to the Mueller report is that they still haven't gotten the message.

There was a time when, even though they were biased, the media understood that it was important to at least appear as objective as possible.  They understood that openly wearing their bias on their sleeve would not only undermine their credibility, but also do damage to journalism itself.

Gradually, the bias became more and more prominent, but in 2000 there were still a lot of people who absolutely refused to see it, and it wasn't THAT easy to expose it.  The bias was subtle, and generally not factually incorrect.  That made it possible to still defend the media with a straight face.

By 2016, the MSM was pretty well complacent that they could let their bias flag fly and anybody who called them on it could be reliably shouted down.  Comfortable in their ability to influence policy decisions, elections, popular support, etc. they just stopped trying to hide it.  "Journalism" became less about informing the public and more about offering  the public service of making sure people though what the MSM believed they should think.  "Bias" became an understatement as open lies and distortions started to dominate press coverage of favored candidates.  

And then Donald Trump won the election.

This is when the MSM panicked, because for the first time they were given the middle finger by a large enough sector of the American public to get a candidate elected President whom the MSM had already decreed was supposed to lose.  They went into overdrive, and any remaining trappings of objective reporting fell away as the MSM, almost as a whole, began to wage a media war against not only the President but those deplorables who had the audacity to break ranks and elect him.  

Ever since that time, they've been trying to recapture their hold on the narrative by screaming louder and louder, as if somehow their efforts had been failing only because they weren't trying hard enough...

...which has been borne out.  I recall shortly after the election some bigwig at CNN openly acknowledging that he felt their mistake was not having done enough to help Clinton get elected, which included playing too much of the content of Trump's speeches.  In other words, they felt they had failed because they allowed the public to have too much unfiltered information.

If that doesn't frighten you, it really should.

Now, they think they can fix the situation by filtering everything and shouting it louder, but what they don't realize is that the only people who still listen to them are the people who already think like them anyway.  They don't have the influence they once did, and are blind to that.

[NeuroTypical]

It is true that media/news sources/journalists/reporters/etc, are absolutely critical for freedom.

That said, I don't really care about big networks like CNN, MSNBC, or Fox any more.  They can be as evil or lying or agenda driven as they want - they are obsolete, and every second they fall further into obscurity.  Someone think quick - do ABC and CBS even still exist as news agencies?  Do they, like, have a website or a channel or something?   5 years ago, such a thought would have been unthinkable.  I grew up in a home where we had dinner, then sat down in front of the TV to watch the news.  I bet half of Americans under 30 have never heard of such a thing. 

I'm down with media diversity.  Blogs and Twitter feeds and Facebook groups and newsrooms from companies. 

Journalists can still excel and earn Pulitzer prizes working for whoever they work for.  But every day, every hour, 100 fewer Americans give a flying wet slap about getting their news from media giants. We'll keep the Wall Street Journal, because it remains excellent and relevant.   Otherwise, no matter where news comes from, I click the sources, until I'm reading the firsthand account of the person who was actually there, watching a video of it actually happening.

If the internet ever stops being as free as it is (which is a legitimate worry), then my opinion'll have to change.  But right now, lol:

 

[unixknight]

I think at this point the only reason most people get the Sunday paper is for the coupons and the non-news content.

[Just_A_Guy]

16 minutes ago, unixknight said:

I think at this point the only reason most people get the Sunday paper is for the coupons and the non-news content.

And the Sunday comics, but even those aren’t funny anymore . . .

[Sunday21]

If the Democrats elect Mike Pence, they deserve to lose. Not that Trudeau’s recent behaviour can be excused. The next Canadian election should be interesting.

[NeuroTypical]

22 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

And the Sunday comics, but even those aren’t funny anymore . . .

Even the Sunday comics have moved online.

Did you know Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County) have teamed up on Berkeley's facebook page to do a project together?  Free?  They're doing crossover comics even as we speak!

They kicked it off on April 1, but they seem to be continuing it.

https://www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed/photos/a.401977473166345/2443890842308321/?type=3&theater

 

[NeuroTypical]

On 3/29/2019 at 8:56 AM, NeuroTypical said:

It is good times, these years.  Since the late 1980's, I've been one of the people talking about the left/liberal bias in mainstream media.  Here's what I see happening:

- These days the left/liberal/progressive bias seems to be an accepted reality (by both viewers and content providers). 

- It has been satisfying to watch print newspapers fall in circulation/prominence/validity/profits/# of employees. 

- Additionally, current forces (including the current president's extreme rhetoric of #fakenews), are basically killing CNN, MSNBC, and others.  "Mainstream media" is still the term, but as teh interwebs makes everything so dang accessible, that phrase has lost much of it's meaning.  CNN is becoming a laughing stock of clickbait titles and emotional sensationalism.

- Finally, lol:

Schadenfrude (sp?):

https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-biden-finally-sits-down-for-an-in-person-interview-with-the-weather-channel