I see this frequently on Twitter and on other message boards, but I don’t know what media outlets they mean. Often, in fact, it’s in response to a media report of whatever they think is being ignored.
The most common is the media not calling Trump’s disinformation campaign “lies.” The reason they don’t is evident to me, first and foremost journalistic ethics. I’ve never reporting that didn’t offer concrete evidence of untruth. Outrageously racist and xenophobic comments are reported by most outlets, but does anyone really need the inflammatory bigotry pointed out?
This is a serious question. Are there examples of mainstream, respected news outlets failing to report trump’s egregious breaches of truth and common decency? I don’t see it.
The problem as some perceive it is that Trump has not yet been impeached or seen his popularity rating nosedive to single digits despite his actions, therefore “the media” is at fault for not being more scathing than they already are.
The following appeared in the news section of my local paper yesterday under the headline “Trump doctors Biden video to emphasize allegations”:
“President Donald Trump, ignoring his own history of buying a porn star’s silence and bragging about sexual misconduct, on Thursday leveled another broadside at Joe Biden…”
Again, this appeared as a news story.
The kind of journalistic ethics I recall from years past (and tried to adhere to in my own work as a reporter) would have placed that sort of commentary in an editorial or op-ed piece. Standards have fallen so far that it’s now considered acceptable “reporting”.
Apparently it’s nowhere near enough for certain people who loathe Trump.
He’s only “getting away with it” in so far as he remains in office. And there are solutions to that which don’t require news media sleaze.
Very good point, Jackmanii. conversely, if FOX News and others of their ilk are bolstering the trump with their extreme partisanship, then any extreme is the only way to counteract them.
Your local paper running that story is eye-opening. Partisan reporting has certainly moved the limits on what is considered news vs opinion.
I have a vague memory of Walter Cronkite or someone similar delivering pointed if not searing editorial commentary (clearly indicated as such) during the evening news. I’d love to see that done now on national and local news, but it’s virtually nonexistent. Even the newspapers in my area have reduced themselves to relatively tame commentary on local issues, or reproducing major city papers’ editorials rather than risk providing their own on important national issues.
Instead of good editorials we get obviously slanted reporting, which convinces people of various persuasions in their belief that major news organizations are not to be trusted, and leaves them even more vulnerable to fakery which feeds into their delusions.
Fox’s “reporting” bias is worse than (for example) that of CNN and ABC, but by an increasingly slim margin. Copying Fox is not a solution.
Serious question here from a non-journalist. What is untrue about the quoted statement?
I personally just think a lot of people (including the “media”) are getting fed up with the constant lies and hypocrisy coming from the President and the White House (to include the White House Press Secretary).
Because the way it is reported is an intention to be a “gotcha” of Trump - which isn’t untrue, but belongs more in the Op-Ed section than in the news report section.
There’s a difference between “Democrats are using delaying tactics this Senate session against McConnell’s judiciary picks” and “Democrats are using delaying tactics against McConnell despite having hypocritically decried the very same obstructionism when Obama and their party was in charge.”
Another problem is that media have been “de-massified” or decentralized. In Cronkite era, not only were the media more professional but there were a relatively small number of information “gatekeepers.” In some ways, this trend has been positive: de-massified media probably made it easier for the #metoo media to be taken seriously and put Bill Cosby in prison. On the other hand, traditional media are competing with a many-headed hydra of non-traditional outlets, which is probably why standards of journalism continue to decline. When anyone can call themselves a reporter and an investigator, professionalism becomes extinct.
In the beginning, a lot of media would just quote Trump when he said blatant lies, and more or less just left it at that. This is because they were used to quoting presidents who might say something that is debatable, though not materially false. Then they would wait for an opposing statement to come out from a leader in the other party, and quote that, too.
But then Trump came along, and he had already mastered the art of truthiness (probably from watching Fox News). He says things that to simplistic minds fit into and gratify a simplistic worldview, especially one that fuels self-defined grievances and self-entitlement. So in the beginning, the media would quote his bullshit in their customary way, as though he were just voicing a particular opinion on some policy debate, waiting for someone else to counter with the opposing view that they could could later quote.
The problem with truthiness is that it’s not about debate. It’s about being the first to speak–making the bullshit statement before anyone else, because that’s what sticks in simplistic minds. It sets the stage irrevocably for the bullshit to dominate. Trump didn’t invent this. The Republican party had been cultivating a base by using truthiness for decades. And Trump was already using it himself before he ran, in his bullshit business and his bullshit TV show. He could see how people like Ted Cruz were using it, but not to full effect, and he just amplified it for the campaign, (which hasn’t stopped).
So–at least in the beginning–the media inadvertently abetted Trump, because they had always worked with a particular model of reporting. And really, that’s a large part of why Trump has a base who will vote for him even if he shoots someone on 5th Avenue.
I think some media realized that if they didn’t employ a different model, the alternative facts and other bullshit would eventually just make journalism useless. I mean, once Trump can use truthiness to convince a third of the country that any journalism which criticizes him is “fake news,” then really, all bets are off.
Trump hasn’t changed the media; the media have changed over the course of the past 25 years. Trump just saw the opening and blasted right through it. He ran as an independent in 2000 and hardly anyone remembers it because hardly anyone knew he was running. But by 2016, he had already proven how he could use his twitter account to cause political ripple effects and grab the media’s attention. But really, the Kardashians have shown how to get attention. YouTube stars have shown how to get attention. Sarah Palin posted about “death panels” on Facebook, which got picked up and got a lot of buzz on various websites and on mainstream networks - this predated Trump’s infamous birther tweet storm in 2011 and his infamous special announcement in 2012. The media haven’t treated Trump any differently in the two years since he became president than they treated him before. Twitter and social media platforms have allowed men to bite dogs.
Yes, people have been talking about just how bad the media is pretty regularly over the past 20 years. Glenn Greenwald was always vocal about just how softly the mainstream American media handled Obama especially now compared to Trump. An overly friendly President to the press lead to the press to forgive and forget his sins, and an overly hostile President to the press now has the press constantly on the attack.
I think the mainstream media left Obama alone simply because he was, well, kinda boring. I’d also submit that it’s possible that the right wing propaganda actually distracted the mainstream media from doing its job of giving Obama his proper scrutiny - not that it would have necessarily done that anyway, but Fox News’ sensationalistic reactions to the culture war issues meant that the rest of the media spent an inordinate amount of time analyzing media coverage of Obama rather than actually looking at Obama’s decisions, and there were decisions that could have been fairly criticized and should have received more scrutiny - his decisions and indecisions in Libya and Syria, for instance.
The fact we can call the Obama presidency “Boring” and have people seriously call him the “No Scandal President” really shows how much the news media dropped the ball. Does nobody else remember that the NSA Snowden revelations happened on his watch?
I was too busy reading about Obama’s birth certificate.
The moment the media let that idiotic nothingburger of a fabricated story hit their official content was the moment they lost any argument that they should be considered purveyors of news.
They exist to get you to click their links. They don’t care if the person in question is lying, unless they can get a juicy admission from them that will get clicks.
One thing the mainstream media doesn’t seem to get - and perhaps never will get - is that the perception that they are openly rooting for one side, makes many voters rebel inwardly and want to vote the other way. It’s basic human nature; rebelling against the idea of “doing what you’re told to do.”
It doesn’t matter how valid the media’s criticism of Trump is, it doesn’t matter how corrupt Trump is, it doesn’t matter how much more qualified Hillary (or whatever Democratic candidate) may be - if the perception exists that “the media is trying to cram this party or that candidate down our throats,” voters will rebel.
And I think the mainstream media left Obama alone simply because he was, well, kinda a Democrat.
Journalists are overwhelmingly left of center. And they, unconsciously or not, react accordingly. Remember the second debate between Romney and Obama. The press had built Obama up in their own minds such that they expected him to win handily in the first debate. Instead, being used to softball questions and deference, he lost badly. So they decided in the second debate that the moderator would jump in to help Obama when he needed it, which is what he did.
How rational does that sound when you substitute “the facts” for "the media? As in, for example, “It’s very unfair that the facts show I shouldn’t support the guy I already decided I want to vote for”? Are you suggesting that the media shouldn’t be critical of candidates when it’s factually warranted?
Point being, many voters are low-information imbeciles whose candidate selections are knee-jerk reactions without any sign of critical thinking whatsoever. They may be resentful that “the media” and “the facts” sometimes seem lined up against their favorite candidate (hence the dislike of “elitists”, "intellectuals:, and other purveyors of factual information) but if they were supportive instead, it would just redouble their prejudiced beliefs. When voters have poor information and seem to lack critical thinking skills, you can’t win with facts and logic. The only possible solution isn’t to change the facts or the media’s reporting of them, but to inform voters more responsibly and more honestly than is currently being done by right-wing chain letters, Facebook posts, and Fox News. Voters are generally much better informed in countries and cultures that have no significant equivalent to flatly irresponsible lying partisan media like Fox News, while in the US, Fox is not only mainstream, it’s actually a dominant force in the news business.