That’s a muddled and oddly self serving self recrimination from Will Rahn. What he gets right is the acknowledgement that media journalists latch on to narratives and seek to follow and strengthen those narratives. That these paid professionals choose the easy paths and seek no further understanding of motives and means and facts which go against their assumptions.
Good for Mr. Rahn for acknowledging that. But his diagnosis is incomplete and off the mark. Yeah, the narrative following has to stop. That should be the easy part, if they just follow the classic journalist rules. Most of them, if they took journalism classes anywhere, were surely taught the five “w’s”, along with their stilted stylebook reporting language.
But Mr. Rahn goes on to sneer at “explainer websites and data reporters” and what he believes (but doesn’t list) that they get “hilariously wrong”. But in his dismissiveness he doesn’t ask or investigate what they may get boringly right in their attention to data and efforts to explain. That’s where the real smugness of media journalism occurs, and in his bubble Rahn misses it entirely. He bemoans the Press’ “profound failure of empathy”, their posturing and their focus on cataloguing ignorance, but his solution is to become “more impartial” and to present the “reasoned disagreement” of those who disagree with factual reporting. By which he devalues factual reporting and advocates more respectful representation of grievances.
How about more reporting of news and less representation of opinions, Mr. Rahn? How about you and your colleagues spend less time reporting on how a particular story may affect opinions and more time giving those stories meaning? How about you evaluate a story’s newsworthiness in terms of informational value instead of influence and page clicks?
At least Rahn has verified his own titular thesis here. The Press is certainly smug. But they’re no better at self examination than they at informational fidelity. In the words of one of the Twitterati Rahn apparently finds so important: Sad!
The woman is remarkably ill informed about world events and international relations; which is a different trope. Saudi Arabia and Qatar who ISIS wishes to overthrow are supporting ISIS? No one really can credibly say that, and the email in question , thst was related by Hillary (who was out of office when ISIS came into being) has no clue either way.
It does little to set aside the “Trump voters are stupid” meme.
If that’s your point, then I agree with you. Progressives can be impatient with idiots and poor at managing them, having as they do the expectation that basic facts should be self-evident. Given the demographics and the circumstances they were dealing with, and the inherent weaknesses of democracy, it’s clear in retrospect that the Democrats and their allies and surrogates did not run as effective a campaign as they should have. Whereas Trump, the showman and professional con-man, did. In a better world he would have been exposed as the fraud and dangerous demagogue that he is.
I do, however, think that we should be cautious about the lessons that we extrapolate from this. An election shouldn’t be a contest between competing con-men and carnival barkers, and at some level the electorate really is responsible for their own fate and they do end up getting the government they deserve.
She, like so many others (IMO), voted against her own best interest because those who disagreed with her failed to treat her with kid gloves?.. Where does my obligation for social nicety end and her obligation to having a well informed opinion begin?
There is a very strong argument to be made for a more civil and tolerant society. That Jonathan Pie video you linked elsewhere is a compelling argument for that. Both sides could benefit from taking that advice to heart. I certainly will give it serious consideration.
But isn’t that turning a blind eye to the fact that not all ideas/ideologies are created equal and some are downright ugly and anti-social and must be called out as just that?
I doubt that anyone will care if you apologize or not.
People had been demanding that the voters have robust conversations about the various issues facing the U.S.A… Some people resorted to name-calling, etc. in order to better drive home their point. At the end, the Democrats were only talking to Democrats. Republicans, conservatives, and independents stopped listening to what Democrats had to say. Why bother? They’re just Democrats who call the rest of us racists, deplorables, unhinged, misogynists, blah, blah, blah. You lost your sounding board. And the election. And you don’t know why.
Democrats/LSM convinced Democrats/LSM that they were winning.
Currently, the GOP controls the Presidency, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, 30+ (33?) Governor’s offices, and most of the state legislatures.
The Democrats thought they were doing a great job. Just ask any Democrat. The problem was that Democrats weren’t listening to anyone else. Non-Democrat opinions did not matter to them.
Yeah so what? Every political party has it’s share of bigots. That doesn’t mean every political party needs to be painted with a broad stereotypical brush.
I was called all sorts of names by the hypocritical self-proclaimed tolerant left for advocating the point that just because someone use a particular word or wears a flag doesn’t necessarily mean that they are absolutely doing it for racist or bigoted reasons. I was called racist and an idiot and worse by merely pointing out that people may have their own or even no reason for some of their expressions. It put me off of several people on here for quite a bit of time how reflexive the attacks are. Seems like nothing has changed.
I even remember in some of my first few posts mentioning how people who could be allies will easily be enemies if you attack them unjustly and personally. In some ways Trump is a good lesson. Doubt it will be learned.
Yeah that’s a good point. But what is more effective.
Say you have an ideology/religion that has some extremists that push gays off of buildings. Do you attack anyone associated with that ideology/religion or the extreme elements and the extreme actions? The reason words matter is because when something has a billion or so loosely or strongly affiliated with a label you don’t want to alienate potential allies!
I’m guilty of it myself. I crack jokes at the left. I paint with broad brush progressives that want a safe place and a therapy dog because their candidate lost. I pick on those who want to get words like “brown bag” or manhole out of the language because they’ve been deemed non-PC or non-inclusive. Well, that’s different. Those people deserve to be picked on. That’s the nutty progressives though. I don’t think it’s all of them.
godDAMN do a lot of Republicans want to find someone to blame that’s not, y’know, THE PEOPLE WHO CAST THE VOTES.
It absolutely says something about every Trump voter. The best thing it can say about a Trump voter is that they knowingly cast a vote for a man who retweeted white supremacists, who was endorsed by the Klan, and who bragged about committing sexual assault, but that they just don’t care enough about the safety of people of color or women under his regime to let that affect their vote.
That’s the best thing it can say about them.
Blame for this travesty falls squarely on the people who voted for Trump. Other people may need to change strategies going forward–I’m certainly hoping that the pro-Wall-Street Democrats find their hands gently removed from the steering wheel–but the blame is on Trump voters alone.
I agree the attacks are sometimes reflexive. But this election taught us that being a sickening racist isn’t a deal-breaker for a quarter of the country.
The dem problem was assuming that showing that Trump was a fucking loathsome nut was enough. They needed to show what they’d do to fix the problems. Note however, that Trump himself never showed how he’d fix their problems. He’s an empty suit.
ISTM that you are underscoring the point of the opinion piece in the OP.
“It should be self-evident that you are wrong, and don’t know what your own interests are. Once I point that out, if you don’t agree, you are an idiot and I have no patience with you.”
Perhaps your obligation should kick in before hers does.
It appears that the OP is saying that CBS never considered it.
There is a strain of progressivism that uses politics as a religion: seeking absolution for original sins, looking for transcendance, and above all, looking to distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous.
If you were to learn by reasonably reliable evidence that adopting my suggested approach over yours by a few thousand people would have changed the course of the election, would you still insist on “No way?”
I think it’s a mistake to believe that people are voting against their overall interests. Economic interests are one subset of all interests, and different people can weigh the relative importance to themselves differently. I would trade my personally paying higher taxes for…more permissive firearm laws. I don’t think if I vote for a person that could deliver on that tradeoff that I am voting against my interests.
Sure some people can make uninformed choices and behave as you say, but I think it’s a mistake to apply this line of thought in a widespread manner.
