The Charlotte Observer condemned Trump's lies about FEMA last week and coverage in local NC papers has been brutal to him since Helene. I remember the same happening in Milwaukee when he insulted that city right before holding the RNC there. I'm guessing these local outlets reach way more swing voters than the New York Times (outside of Long Island, anyway).
This article is like a roll call of journalistic mendacity. It's gotten a little better since Jack Smith's most recent legal drops and Trump's nonsensical speeches, but it's still very bad.
One thing I noticed back in February when the NY Times was even deeper in their sanewashing muck than they are now is that a lot of times, they buried the lede.
For example, in an article for this headline:
"The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement"
The lede paragraph was:
"Long known for his improvised and volatile stage performances, former President Donald J. Trump now tends to finish his rallies on a solemn note."
Wow. The art of normalizing a scoundrel in full view. But the real lede should have been this, which was a few paragraphs down:
"He has been married three times, has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, has been convicted of business fraud and has never showed much interest in church services. Last week, days before Easter, he posted on his social media platform an infomercial-style video hawking a $60 Bible that comes with copies of some of the nation’s founding documents and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.”
The man he should be compared to is Jim Jones, so the headline should have been:
"The Makings of a Cult: How Trump Has Manipulated the Media to Form a Dangerous Political Cult"
I've applied to be the head of the NY Times headline writing crew. I'll let y'all know how it goes.
The mainstream media’s constant demand that Harris be more specific without asking the same of Trump perpetuates a sexist/racist trope. In essence it’s: “Prove to us VP Harris that, as a black woman, you could be better than a white man”. But no one has raised whether or not Trump has been specific about his plans! This is a huge gaping hole in mainstream media coverage which pretends to compare the candidates equally. He gets to “apply for the job” with no specifics, while she has to prove herself again and again.
Let’s demand some specifics of Trump! Trump says he’s going to impose lots of tariffs that will solve all our economic problems. Tariffs on what? How much will the tariffs be? Specifically, how much money will they raise? Who will pay that money?
As for deporting all 20 million illegal immigrants? What does that look like? How Would the Trump Administration find them? Do they raid businesses or homes? Where does Trump get the money for this mass deportation program? Will people have any rights in the process?
As for replacing civil servants with loyalists: What does that process look like? What happens when a bunch of people lose their jobs all at once? How would that impact the economy?
And finally, most important of all: what will Trump do if he loses the election? Will he respect the courts opinions regarding the election process? Could he Honestly swear an oath to uphold and Defend the constitution of the United States?
Scott Dworkin and Steven Beschloss wrote a joint Substack on this very subject. Would it be possible for all you successful Substack authors to put your heads together and create a timely “column” to post as an ad in the NYT or WA-PO?
I’m now 83 and remember the years when television newscasts were required to tell the truth about what they were reporting!
I remember when that was overturned. Bad actors such as the Murdochs realized they now had a blank check to lie to the world.
It’s time to rein that in before it destroys America.
It’s time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and bring back the trust in reporting news. I might then restart my newspaper subscription which I discarded more than ten years ago.
While we are on the subject, some people have said that requiring “truth” would (a) go against the first amendment, (b) some people’s truth is another person’s lie, (c) which way is out!
This lets the lawyers become rich and the rest of us poor.
At this stage of the game, Big Media’s slight shift toward fair reporting is too late. It doesn’t provide them any redemption in my book. If Trump wins, they will have earned a big piece of the blame pie. If Trump loses, I hope Americans won’t quickly forget who represented the two campaigns of such unequal candidates as a neck and neck horse race.
The MEDIA has handled Trump with kid gloves for much of this last decade. Part of me believes the MEDIA finds him amusing; an attention getter that in turn gets attention to and for the MEDIA. The larger portion of the MEDIA has no honor; no viable sense of truth or fact. The MEDIA has become a bloviator sphere. Just like Trump, their darling that keeps on giving. Even when the MEDIA is critical of Trump, the MEDIA repeatedly falls back what is now called "sane-splaining". That gives Trump a soft landing and saves the day for whatever MEDIA outlet is trying to be newsworthy.
Is it too late to be calling Trump out? Given the statistical retention factor of the average American, perhaps nots. Also, relying on the fact that many people do not make a final decision on their vote until they are at the point of actually voting, there may be some hope and salvation. There is one thing for certain: The average American sure as hell better come to terms with the reality that we are at the precipice of deciding on one of two Americas: The constitutional democracy that we currently have. Or, the fascist autocracy that Trump, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the U.S. Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin want.
The mainstream media is blindly walking into its own demise. They are educated people. They know how the media in Russia has no freedom. Do they not see that it will be same in US if Trump wins? How can they so blind?
Spot on. It's a point I've been making for a while. Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself. Trying to curry favour with him is pissing into the wind (sorry to be so crude but I couldn't think of a better description that isn't cruder). What's more, trump won't remember all the favours the press did him or even perceive then as favours, reporting blatantly biased in his favour. He'll only remember the unbiased reports and carry that grudge and grievance to the grave.
“You're going to fact-check? How dare you? No way!” should tell you all you need to know. And Vance made a similar complaint during the debate (“Hey, you said no fact-checking!”). They are basically telling everyone that they intend to lie but don't anyone dare point that out.
In today’s WAPO, this HEADLINE: “Trump’s controversial agenda to reshape schools is framing this year’s education debate”
WTF? TRUMP has no “agenda to reshape schools!” Only I ever heard is that he will close the Department of Education. Another example of WAPO legitimizing this senile sociopath.
A whole lot to digest here. Boiled down to its basic premise, the “press” has a dastardly double standard when it comes to our presidential candidates. At one point it was stated that the Times was “unaware” of some issue, and I find that impossible to believe. Another point was that “AG” (Sulzberger, the NYT publisher) was at the controls for deciding who got what coverage. He also writes for the Washington Post and some of his pieces aren’t half bad. I think this issue with interviews has to do with testosterone of those who have the “reins” at those outlets. It’s up to us to send a hurricane of letters to the offending media outlets and let them know of their misdeeds and our dislike of their ongoing double standards. Today I mentioned to the NYT in a letter complaining about the issue and insofar as Trump doesn’t interview with them either, perhaps it’s time to send him an invitation to stop by the NYT for a sit down, and following that invite Ms. Harris to interview and comment on Trump’s “performance”. That all might sound crazy, but maybe a sign of fairness by the NYT would convince the Harris campaign folks that she might get a fair hearing.
Sorry to double post, but do any of you remember OJ's 2016 campaign vow to shut down the freeloading PBS and NPR? I couldn't fathom at the time why he would say such a thing, but then it became obvious that while he could demonize mainstream media as a tool of the Democrats, that NPR and PBS were too well trusted, so he must have feared that and wanted to find a way to silence them up front
Well, the corporate-controlled media (CCM) is certainly late. And in my opinion, they are too late to have much impact now. They are definitely too late to gain my trust back. Whether they are too late to keep Don the Con and his gang of christofascists out of power remains to be seen. However the chips fall, history will not be kind to the CCM. If we are allowed to have history that is.
Another point of light: local media. More people in Michigan probably subscribe to the Detroit Free Press than the NYT, and they interrupted their coverage of the Tigers' playoff run today to report on Trump forgetting where he was and insulting Detroit while speaking in Detroit. https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/10/10/donald-trump-detroit-economic-club-michigan/75614308007/
The Charlotte Observer condemned Trump's lies about FEMA last week and coverage in local NC papers has been brutal to him since Helene. I remember the same happening in Milwaukee when he insulted that city right before holding the RNC there. I'm guessing these local outlets reach way more swing voters than the New York Times (outside of Long Island, anyway).
That got a lot of local coverage, it seems. It was all over my Google news feed today from various Detroit TV news station websites, etc.
I've been surprised by the amount of negative local coverage, given how many markets have Sinclair stations.
And from the clip thread, it may have been the most coherent thing he said there.
This article is like a roll call of journalistic mendacity. It's gotten a little better since Jack Smith's most recent legal drops and Trump's nonsensical speeches, but it's still very bad.
One thing I noticed back in February when the NY Times was even deeper in their sanewashing muck than they are now is that a lot of times, they buried the lede.
For example, in an article for this headline:
"The Church of Trump: How He’s Infusing Christianity Into His Movement"
The lede paragraph was:
"Long known for his improvised and volatile stage performances, former President Donald J. Trump now tends to finish his rallies on a solemn note."
Wow. The art of normalizing a scoundrel in full view. But the real lede should have been this, which was a few paragraphs down:
"He has been married three times, has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault, has been convicted of business fraud and has never showed much interest in church services. Last week, days before Easter, he posted on his social media platform an infomercial-style video hawking a $60 Bible that comes with copies of some of the nation’s founding documents and the lyrics to Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the U.S.A.”
The man he should be compared to is Jim Jones, so the headline should have been:
"The Makings of a Cult: How Trump Has Manipulated the Media to Form a Dangerous Political Cult"
I've applied to be the head of the NY Times headline writing crew. I'll let y'all know how it goes.
I've been calling him the Jim Jones of politics for years💙✌🏻
The mainstream media’s constant demand that Harris be more specific without asking the same of Trump perpetuates a sexist/racist trope. In essence it’s: “Prove to us VP Harris that, as a black woman, you could be better than a white man”. But no one has raised whether or not Trump has been specific about his plans! This is a huge gaping hole in mainstream media coverage which pretends to compare the candidates equally. He gets to “apply for the job” with no specifics, while she has to prove herself again and again.
Let’s demand some specifics of Trump! Trump says he’s going to impose lots of tariffs that will solve all our economic problems. Tariffs on what? How much will the tariffs be? Specifically, how much money will they raise? Who will pay that money?
As for deporting all 20 million illegal immigrants? What does that look like? How Would the Trump Administration find them? Do they raid businesses or homes? Where does Trump get the money for this mass deportation program? Will people have any rights in the process?
As for replacing civil servants with loyalists: What does that process look like? What happens when a bunch of people lose their jobs all at once? How would that impact the economy?
And finally, most important of all: what will Trump do if he loses the election? Will he respect the courts opinions regarding the election process? Could he Honestly swear an oath to uphold and Defend the constitution of the United States?
Scott Dworkin and Steven Beschloss wrote a joint Substack on this very subject. Would it be possible for all you successful Substack authors to put your heads together and create a timely “column” to post as an ad in the NYT or WA-PO?
I reposted this piece on my SubStack if you’re unable to find it elsewhere. Compelling and uplifting.
I’m now 83 and remember the years when television newscasts were required to tell the truth about what they were reporting!
I remember when that was overturned. Bad actors such as the Murdochs realized they now had a blank check to lie to the world.
It’s time to rein that in before it destroys America.
It’s time to bring back the Fairness Doctrine and bring back the trust in reporting news. I might then restart my newspaper subscription which I discarded more than ten years ago.
While we are on the subject, some people have said that requiring “truth” would (a) go against the first amendment, (b) some people’s truth is another person’s lie, (c) which way is out!
This lets the lawyers become rich and the rest of us poor.
At this stage of the game, Big Media’s slight shift toward fair reporting is too late. It doesn’t provide them any redemption in my book. If Trump wins, they will have earned a big piece of the blame pie. If Trump loses, I hope Americans won’t quickly forget who represented the two campaigns of such unequal candidates as a neck and neck horse race.
The MEDIA has handled Trump with kid gloves for much of this last decade. Part of me believes the MEDIA finds him amusing; an attention getter that in turn gets attention to and for the MEDIA. The larger portion of the MEDIA has no honor; no viable sense of truth or fact. The MEDIA has become a bloviator sphere. Just like Trump, their darling that keeps on giving. Even when the MEDIA is critical of Trump, the MEDIA repeatedly falls back what is now called "sane-splaining". That gives Trump a soft landing and saves the day for whatever MEDIA outlet is trying to be newsworthy.
Is it too late to be calling Trump out? Given the statistical retention factor of the average American, perhaps nots. Also, relying on the fact that many people do not make a final decision on their vote until they are at the point of actually voting, there may be some hope and salvation. There is one thing for certain: The average American sure as hell better come to terms with the reality that we are at the precipice of deciding on one of two Americas: The constitutional democracy that we currently have. Or, the fascist autocracy that Trump, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the U.S. Supreme Court and Vladimir Putin want.
The mainstream media is blindly walking into its own demise. They are educated people. They know how the media in Russia has no freedom. Do they not see that it will be same in US if Trump wins? How can they so blind?
Spot on. It's a point I've been making for a while. Trump has no loyalty to anyone but himself. Trying to curry favour with him is pissing into the wind (sorry to be so crude but I couldn't think of a better description that isn't cruder). What's more, trump won't remember all the favours the press did him or even perceive then as favours, reporting blatantly biased in his favour. He'll only remember the unbiased reports and carry that grudge and grievance to the grave.
“You're going to fact-check? How dare you? No way!” should tell you all you need to know. And Vance made a similar complaint during the debate (“Hey, you said no fact-checking!”). They are basically telling everyone that they intend to lie but don't anyone dare point that out.
The mainstream media should run a story recounting Trump's lies that day every day from now until Nov. 5. Just to make up for what they've done.
In today’s WAPO, this HEADLINE: “Trump’s controversial agenda to reshape schools is framing this year’s education debate”
WTF? TRUMP has no “agenda to reshape schools!” Only I ever heard is that he will close the Department of Education. Another example of WAPO legitimizing this senile sociopath.
There is a very long article way down on CNN’s home page on the 40 odd lies he told during 2 stops in Pennsylvania…. Way down. WHY?
Krimeny! This has been obvious for ages, and only now is it being called out.
The NYT foremost deserves a medal from Putin himself for his aid to Russia’s allies!
A whole lot to digest here. Boiled down to its basic premise, the “press” has a dastardly double standard when it comes to our presidential candidates. At one point it was stated that the Times was “unaware” of some issue, and I find that impossible to believe. Another point was that “AG” (Sulzberger, the NYT publisher) was at the controls for deciding who got what coverage. He also writes for the Washington Post and some of his pieces aren’t half bad. I think this issue with interviews has to do with testosterone of those who have the “reins” at those outlets. It’s up to us to send a hurricane of letters to the offending media outlets and let them know of their misdeeds and our dislike of their ongoing double standards. Today I mentioned to the NYT in a letter complaining about the issue and insofar as Trump doesn’t interview with them either, perhaps it’s time to send him an invitation to stop by the NYT for a sit down, and following that invite Ms. Harris to interview and comment on Trump’s “performance”. That all might sound crazy, but maybe a sign of fairness by the NYT would convince the Harris campaign folks that she might get a fair hearing.
Sorry to double post, but do any of you remember OJ's 2016 campaign vow to shut down the freeloading PBS and NPR? I couldn't fathom at the time why he would say such a thing, but then it became obvious that while he could demonize mainstream media as a tool of the Democrats, that NPR and PBS were too well trusted, so he must have feared that and wanted to find a way to silence them up front
Outstanding assemblage of media commments/articles, and great and damning analysis, primarily of the NYT.
Well, the corporate-controlled media (CCM) is certainly late. And in my opinion, they are too late to have much impact now. They are definitely too late to gain my trust back. Whether they are too late to keep Don the Con and his gang of christofascists out of power remains to be seen. However the chips fall, history will not be kind to the CCM. If we are allowed to have history that is.