What media Americans trust

[Strike For The South]

I think it could, it just takes more effort on the part of the journalist.

Most Journalists now have seen too many movies. As a generalization they are more worried about being the resistance than getting a story.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Most Journalists now have seen too many movies. As a generalization they are more worried about being the resistance than getting a story.

So completely concur than I am annoyed at not having posted this myself. I am bested by a younger and more agile mind.

[Sarmatian]

So completely concur than I am annoyed at not having posted this myself. I am bested by a younger and more agile mind.

Ah, but no one can match your wisdom and experience.

I know for a fact that Strikes doesn't take a strong position on any issue until he sees your stance.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Ah, but no one can match your wisdom and experience.

I know for a fact that Strikes doesn't take a strong position on any issue until he sees your stance.

Perhaps. Save for his love for cher Louis, in which none were as avid or faithful.

[Crandar]

In these harsh times, the media the Americans trust the most is their tribe's propaganda:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/demo.../01/what-video

[Montmorency]

MAINSTREAM MEDIA, EMBRACE YOUR LIBERALISM

Conservatives have used this same basic method for decades now, treating liberal bias in the mainstream media as a fact, and a conspiracy in and of itself. For just as long, mainstream media institutions have gone to great lengths to refute the right’s liberal-bias accusations, and make good faith efforts to appease their critics. It was arguably this self-defensive reflex that drove leading news outlets to generate a kind of equivalence between Donald Trump’s campaign promise to turn America into a racist kleptocracy, and Hillary Clinton’s email practices at the State Department. By noting that both candidates had question marks hanging over their heads, they could (they believed) preempt accusations of liberal bias from the right.

The conciliatory approach has never worked, and because the accusations themselves are deployed in bad faith, it, importantly, can not work. The goal of movement conservatism is not to make media more representative of American politics at the margin, but to destroy journalism as a mediating institution altogether. What might work instead, though, would be for the targets of right wing criticism to embrace the liberal epithet (in a manner of speaking) and then treat the endless right-wing bleating about partisan bias as so much obnoxious noise.

The first step toward ending the soccer-flop-style relationship between mainstream media and its right wing antagonists is for journalists to accept that the fight is over, and conservatives have won.
[...]
Step two is for journalists to accept that while their organizations aren’t “liberal” in the American-partisan sense of the word, the vocation itself is “liberal” in a more profound and important sense, which is why the right wants to crush it... It is increasingly clear that asymmetric polarization is the wrong metaphor for what has happened in American politics.
[...]
[Bannon's] understudy Matthew Boyle has boasted that his organization’s goal is nothing less than “the full destruction and elimination of the entire mainstream media,” through the “weaponization of information.”
[...]
While he has consciously rejected the underpinnings of the liberal west, it is impossible to watch Fox News in prime time, or Devin Nunes at the helm of the House Intelligence Committee, or Rush Limbaugh bellowing at dittoheads, and not conclude that they have done the same, consciously or otherwise.

The job of the mainstream media isn’t to cast judgment on people with different value systems, but journalists can’t do their jobs well if they aren’t aware that the value systems of mainstream journalism and American conservatism are different and in conflict. It should be perfectly possible to apply the neutral rules of modern journalism to both American political parties while accepting that Democrats (and journalists and scientists) descend from the enlightenment tradition, while Republicans (and their allies in conservative media) descend from a different, illiberal tradition—and that this makes the parties behave in different ways.

It is why the right has felt comfortable spending the past weeks fabricating whole-cloth conspiracy theories about the FBI and setting about to cajole and intimidate impartial journalists into taking the theories seriously—or at least into offering liars big platforms to spread disinformation. Journalists have spent decades responding to this kind of manipulation with varying levels of appeasement, hoping to escape the curse of the liberal epithet. They should try embracing their own particular kind of liberalism instead, and letting their bad faith critics scream into the void.

But what incentive do corporate-owned media have to dispense with lip-service to "fairness" and "civility"? The financial/executive/managerial elites have a stake in encouraging broad deference to professionals and professional institutions (cf. Clinton vs. Sanders), and their version of a chivalric ethos provides a superficial legitimacy. "Meritocracy" and noblesse oblige are also (classically) liberal.

[Montmorency]

Illustration of problems with CNN and corporate media in general: "optics over substance". Chris Cillizza recently joined CNN as one of its top political reporters:

His refusal to discuss something that goes beyond the realm of optics is almost fanatical.

Q: Chris, does the Constitution exist?

A: Maybe you misunderstand what I do. I’m not here to debate whether or not the Constitution is a factual object. I’m here to discuss how politicians are received when they debate whether it exists as a document or not.

“I’m a reporter…I don’t think about what the government should or shouldn’t do.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by principles.”

Chilling, like a capitulation to Karl Rove in 2004:

The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'

And of course, certain political philosophies of the first half of the 20th century.



I wasn't aware that Paste Magazine had gotten into politics coverage. In fact they put out some good rhetoric.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...rebirth-o.html

West Virginia had enough. Everything which followed grew from that single fact. You can rewrite and reframe the debate in a thousand different ways, but that’s what it finally comes down to: the teachers fought back, and the teachers won. Strikes get the goods.

Their victory is wonderful news, and welcome tidings in a cold season. Already, the Right is trying to shift the debate: the teachers winning means we have to take money away from Medicare. It’s bullshit, and they know it. They’re using the same old playbook: divide and conquer. They are preaching the same moth-eaten sermon: “There’s a limited amount of money for the plebs to share.” It won’t work anymore. The lie is falling apart, like the pieces of a dying octopus. Capital can only grind so hard and so far before it hits a spine. There’s a limit to how far you can push people before they become militant. That moment was reached in coal country last week.

[...]

Chesterton once suggested the English commonwealth did not “rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.” And so it is in modern America[...] Physical might, physical power, is always on the side of the ruled. It is simply impossible, even with a great military, to rule millions of people, unless you have their cooperation. And that cooperation is coming to an end. If the teachers can strike, anyone can strike. The teachers of West Virginia do not exist by the grace of the state; the state exists by the grace of the teachers.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...am-raises.html

Yemen is f*cked beyond anyone’s understanding of anything being f*cked. The U.S. left after our airbase was overrun in the war years ago. The country’s central government simply can’t care for its people. The war has erased the infrastructure. Untold thousands have died in a famine that threatens literally millions of people. Medical care is as scarce there as fresh water, which is also cause for violence. Who knows how many terrorist, insurgent, foreign, and government forces are fighting each other. It’s a proxy war for Iran and Saudi Arabia, which has scattershot bombed the hell out of the place, including hundreds of innocent civilians (using American weapon systems; Trump just sold them billions worth). As for us, we’ve carried out untold clandestine drone strikes there for years and years[...] So yes, even though al Qaeda and a bunch of other groups operate in Yemen with impunity, this is one place where it’s beyond me why we’re investing anything besides trying as hard as we can to stop hundreds of thousands children from dying of hunger. That’s all I have to say about that.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...f-trump-s.html

If you think the Clintons should be investigated, prosecuted, and jailed, eat shit. You and I are made of different bones, fundamentally different people who exist in different realities, and yours is insane and dangerous and should implode.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Chilling, like a capitulation to Karl Rove in 2004:

Karl Rove would be a guy who spouts off 50 words of ignorant nonsense to justify his 'Where there is a will, there is a way.' style of geopolitics.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Karl Rove would be a guy who spouts off 50 words of ignorant nonsense to justify his 'Where there is a will, there is a way.' style of geopolitics.

Never was all that much of a fan of Rove. He was deemed a political genius for steering Dubya to three successful election wins.

1. Like the Bush family was ever short of donations to allow for solid funding....Not much of a high bar here, was it Karl.
2. Like winning with the President's son, in Texas, with a platform of slightly compassionate conservatism, was gonna be tough. GOP stronghold outside the 4 big cities AND a little tad of leftism to pick off a few middle of the roaders. THIS was brilliance?
3. Bush went up against Al Gore in 2000, with a Ralph Nader to siphon off leftist votes from the most boring Dem nominee in decades -- a man who managed to lose his home state -- and Rove still managed to "brilliantly engineer" a near defeat. The win in Florida was well below the numbers siphoned off by Nader. This is brilliance?
4. Bush's re-election put him up against a NE liberal Brahmin Kerry, in an election barely over 3 years after the 9-11-01 horror and a huge slice of the electorate motivated by worry over terrorism, and Rove still managed to "brilliantly engineer" that election down to the point where a few thousand Ohioans voting the other way would have seen Bush ousted.
5, He helped steer Dubya so well that the TEA party movement erupted as grass roots GOP members begged for someone who would actually try to push for conservative domestic policy agenda items....

Frankly, I am wondering why even Fox News paid this guy one cent for his political insight. I have always suspected that "turd-boy" was a less ironic nickname than either Karl or George thought.

[drone]

3. Bush went up against Al Gore in 2000, with a Ralph Nader to siphon off leftist votes from the most boring Dem nominee in decades -- a man who managed to lose his home state -- and Rove still managed to "brilliantly engineer" a near defeat. The win in Florida was well below the numbers siphoned off by Nader. This is brilliance?

I've said it before, and I will say it again: Gore won his home state in a landslide. He took 85% of the vote in DC.

[Montmorency]

Fox News Latvia* is reported to be a Kremlin mouthpiece.

UPDATE: *Technically not a thing, and the report is on Fox programming (Fox TV) other than Fox News. Also, the guidelines were withdrawn soon after the publication of the report.

According to a letter to the translators of Fox programs which has been obtained by LETA, the translators have to follow Russian subtitling guidelines requiring glossing over or “softening content” concerning accidents, homosexual relationships, “anti-Russian propaganda”, narcotics, extremist activities and suicides.

For instance, the translators are instructed to “soften” all negative language about the Russian military and space program, policies of the Russian president and government, while positive texts about same-sex relationships have to be made more generalized so they could be attributed to relationships of any kind.

Meanwhile, Sean Hannity and Fox & Friends.



Hot dog, looks like my heretofore-unpublished totally-original joke has become timely!

In Soviet Russia, government dictates state TV.

In Trump's America, state TV dictates government.

[Husar]

Fox News Latvia* is reported to be a Kremlin mouthpiece.

UPDATE: *Technically not a thing, and the report is on Fox programming (Fox TV) other than Fox News. Also, the guidelines were withdrawn soon after the publication of the report.

Isn't Fox News the news channel of the Fox Broadcasting Company or are Americans just really into furry animals?

[Fragony]

I am, got two housecats and a lynx(heś not scary)

[Montmorency]

Isn't Fox News the news channel of the Fox Broadcasting Company or are Americans just really into furry animals?

What? Yes? Sort of?

Unlike ABC, CBS and NBC, Fox does not currently air national news programs (morning, evening or overnight) or newsmagazines – choosing to focus solely on its prime time schedule, sports and other ancillary network programming. The absence of a national news program on the Fox network is despite the fact that its parent company, 21st Century Fox, owns Fox News Channel, which launched in August 1996 and currently maintains near-universal distribution within the United States via pay television providers. Fox News is not structured as a news division of the Fox network, and operates as a technically separate entity within 21st Century Fox through the company's Fox News Group subsidiary. However, it does produce some content that is carried by the broadcast network, which is usually separate from the news coverage aired by the cable channel; in particular, FNC anchor Shepard Smith anchors most prime time news presentations on the Fox network, especially during political news events (which are anchored by Bret Baier on Fox News Channel).

Why?



Just so people apprehend what I did wrong with the post above, let me be clear that when I first posted I knew that the report concerned Fox TV and not Fox News Channel (FNC) programming, but I chose to frame it as FNC because I liked how it set up for my Russian Reversal joke, which was (along with the influence of FNC on Trump's thinking/policy) the main point of the post.

That's, you know, a lie. Bad form and neither necessary to nor excused by being secondary to something else.

I didn't edit out or reword the first line for the sake of transparency. It's wrong to be deliberately or even carelessly misleading.

I still like my apt joke though. It's not a great joke, but it's pretty good.

[Husar]

Why?

I probably looked that connection up before, but I was really just curious whether they were all related or whether two seperate corporations would name their channels fox. It's nothing important, you may continue.

[Montmorency]

Speaking of jokes, here's a high-level Twitter troll we should respect.

[Fragony]

I would feel really uneasy in his teachers comfort-zone