I’ve long considered CNN to be the gold standard in news reporting but Trump’s election seems to have caused some of their reporters to get a little unhinged. First, we have them keeping a list of hate crimes reports which in the vast majority of cases are neither corroborated nor confirmed to actually be from Trump supporters rather than anti-Trump people being satirical:
And now CNN is pissy about Facebook allowing a “scourge” of “fake news”:
zuckerberg appears ready to do a little something about it, but wisely does not want Facebook to play editor.
I’d say that breathlessly reporting everyone’s claims to have been targeted because of their identity, without trying to find out if it actually happened, is the very definition of “fake news”.
Reason magazine, who has a fraction of the budget CNN didn’t bother to spend doing due diligence, actually did look into some of these:
You know, if there was a wave of attacks BY minorities, CNN would be VERY cautious and might not even report it if it was true, so as not to “cause alarm”.
Reason.com is a libertarian group. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I am saying they are heavily biased. I actually put in a filter to block the reason.com articles I would read on Reddit, since they were so often complete crap. (I’ve not even done that to Fox News.)
The Reason article cites all its claims, at least a couple of which lead to Snopes and others to mainstream news sources like the Washington Post.
Not that the Reason article is even needed, since CNN’s reports consist almost entirely of “So this happened to me today” and “someone wrote something on a wall, we have no idea who or why”.
As of today, there are more accounts of actual assaults on Trump supporters by anti-Trump activists than there are by Trump supporters. Those Trump supporters are apparently very careful to make sure no one’s filming them, but apparently the anti-Trump activists aren’t that bright.
All news sources are biased. They all have editors (or editorial boards) that choose which stories to run and how much verification is required. Those stories are are tailored to appeal to the demographics of their intended audience as well as appease their benefactors. If you believe that any particular news source is actually “fair and balanced” all that means is that you are part of their target demographic and/or are of like minds with their benefactors.
I didn’t vote for Trump, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the CNN people looking like a bunch of stunned bunnies while I was following the election coverage.
CNN long ago decided to turn news into a show. The beginning of the end was their accidental ‘success’ in reporting on Gulf War I, which showed that news could be prime time TV. Before that, I don’t recall too many people carving out the 7 to 8 p.m. time slot to sit down and watch David French, Bernard Shaw, and Christiana Amanpour. All of them were outstanding journalists but otherwise unimportant in mainstream society. All of that changed after February of 1991.
If we’re discussing the merits of several different proposals to fix the US healthcare system, then a balanced presentation of all viewpoints has merit.
If we’re discussing whether Trump is qualified to be president, whether he has a history of blatant lying, whether he has a history of misogyny, whether he is appointing racists and homphobic bigots to his administration - these are objective matters, not subjective. They should be reported as fact, there is no merit in presenting a “balanced” view, with the truth on one side and truthiness on the other.
You know, of all the adjectives that could possibly be applied to a hate crime, I’ve never thought that a hate crime could be “satirical”. :rolleyes:
And if CNN has become “unhinged”, then so apparently has the CBC. I don’t think any connection with Trumpism should be claimed unless there’s actual evidence, but when the word “Trump” actually appears in graffiti on the door of a Muslim prayer room, it’s pretty hard to deny. Likewise when the reports range across the whole spectrum of media from US News & World Report all the way to Al Jazeera.
I’m pissed off, too, but not at CNN. Not for this.
Same with factual scientific matters that have become “controversial” because morons don’t like them. Nothing pisses me off more than the media quoting, say, climate scientists about new research discoveries, and then for “balance” quoting some bloviating crackpot, as if to guard against the possibility that the scientists were making a terrible mistake because they were not privy to the awesome knowledge being expostulated by some random lunatic or lying industry shill.
CNN regularly interviews complete whack jobs as if they’re rational humans. I don’t know how they find the patience. They had a guy on this morning complaint the “mainstream” reporters should be fired because they don’t understand Trump or his supporters. Saying “voters are angry about politics as usual” is not deep political analysis. (And btw, we have not had “politics as usual” for at least the last 8 years. Politics is traditionally the art of compromising.). Voters are making stupid choices because the media has been letiing idiots on air for 8 years lying about an imagined imagined “crisis” or fake scandal.
Simple. Its the guys down in Marketing. If you resolutely give “both sides” regardless, you gain a few percentage points in viewers than you otherwise would have.
I think CNN does a fine job marketing consumer products … how else would we learn that the new F-150 uses military grade aluminum or there’s a new laxative 'specially formulated or opioid related constipation … if I had a product I wanted to mass-market, I wouldn’t hesitate to contact CNN …
But sure, CNN will pay Pakistani kids to throw rocks at the US Embassy for the great video footage just like any other news outlet … run my commercial right after and I’ll be ten shades of pleased …
You see just as many swastikas at anti-war events as you do Klan marches. For different reasons. If you see a swastika and “Trump” written somewhere, that’s probably not a Trump supporter, that’s someone trying to equate Trump with Nazism.