I’ve got gray hair too, but we’re not the only demographic that consumes news. Plenty of people are familiar with the loose definition of “hack”. My cite is Hack My Life.
But as you well know, there was also actual hacking involved (DNC), so it’s not entirely inappropriate to use that term in both it’s narrow and more general definition.
ETA: I see others made the same point.
I’ve seen it used that way in common speech, in articles and in show titles. Maybe a simple “I’ve learned something new today” is in order?
Journalists are liberal. Politico did a surveylast year which found 25% of White House reporters were Democrats and 0% were Republican. In 2007 NBChad a list of journalists who donated to Democrats or Liberal causes and 87% of donating journalists had given exclusively to Democrats. Twiceas many journalists in 2006 called themselves on the left as on the right. In 2014four times as many journalists surveyed called themselves Democrats than Republicans.
This causes liberal bias. It is reflecting in what stories get covered. For instance many mainstream outlets had stories about Carson saying slaves were immigrants. None of those places had stories when Obama called slaves immigrants. It is reflecting in the tone of the coverage. It is reflected in that many stories do not even acknowledge the conservative side of an issue.
If you listen to a basketball game that is being broadcast by each teams of announcers they will be similar. But there will be a significant difference in the tone of the coverage even if the announcers don’t lie outright. This is because the broadcast teams are affiliated with the teams and are rooting for their own team to win. Journalists are rooting for their team to win. Not only are the rooting but they know that since they are helping to shape people’s perceptions of politics they can help their team win. If basketball victories were determined by a vote of the fans after the game then just imagine how biased the broadcasts would become. That is what political journalism is like.
I don’t think it’s as nefarious as you imply - at all. Consider these two alleged-but-probable things:
Both pretty standard uses of the word “hack.” The Russians tried to hack the elections, via computer hacking.
Is saying “the Russians hacked the election” false or misleading? It glides over a lot of. nuances, and I agree it’s inexact language.
Thing is, language is often inexact. Which is why arguments from dictionary definition tend to be in service of the arguer’s preconceptions.
Perhaps because Obama’s statement was much more nuanced than Carson’s and showed a much better grasp of the history of slavery and provided a bit of context for the comparison, stating that slaves were immigrants “in a sense” but not true immigrants as Carson claimed. But I’m sure it’s enough to satisfy those who seek nothing more than to say “seeeeeeeeeeeee, your guys do it toooooooooooooooo”.
I linked to Eric Alterman’s Nation article earlier; I’d suggest checking out his longer book on the subject of media bias. https://www.amazon.com/What-Liberal-Media-Truth-About/dp/B000HWYIR2
He makes a convincing case for why the personal biases of journalists do not aggregate into a general liberal media bias. (I’m simplifying somewhat; Alterman does analyze general media biases, too.)
To summarize: expectations of professionalism and even-handedness, compounded by pressure from the media conglomerates that pay the bills, all counteract the personal opinions of journalists.
(Anyone who’s worked retail can attest that personal feelings about MegaMart don’t generally affect the way MegaMart employees comport themselves on the job.)
I’ve not read the book, but it sounds ridiculous to me.
Expectations of professionalism and even-handedness don’t counteract bias. The whole point of bias is that people don’t realize that they’re biased, so there’s no way for expectations of professionalism and even-handedness to counteract it. This is especially so when pretty much everyone all around you shares your views, which would additionally color your perspective on what’s “even-handed”.
Pressure from media conglomerates is likely not a factor. I doubt if there’s much pressure from media conglomerates to be even-handed - I don’t think media conglomerates care particularly much, as long as it doesn’t hurt the bottom line. But even if they did care, it would be virtually impossible for a media conglomerate to control the types of subtle bias that people are discussing in this thread (as opposed to the OP and official topic of lying). The only way to control that would be for media conglomerates to micromanage every story, every headline, constantly be vigilant for it. No way this happens.
Okay then, how about PunditFacts for Fox News.
[QUOTE=PunditFacts]
This scorecard shows the ratings for statements made on air by Fox, Fox News and Fox Business personalities and their pundit guests. Rulings do not include statements made on air by politicians or paid spokespeople.
With Pants On Fire @ 9%, False @ 29%, Mostly False @ 21%
[/QUOTE]
No, not unless all those flyers I received last year (and the yards signs, and TV commercials, etc) were also “hacking the election”, in which case the term is completely meaningless.
And “hack has taken on a broader meaning” is wrong. Whatever the word means now, it doesn’t mean “honestly published facts relevant to a campaign, but which said campaign wishes they hadn’t”. The Russians hacked John Podesta’s email account. Let’s leave it at that. The election wasn’t hacked by any reasonable or agreed-upon definition of the word.
I did and I’m still flummoxed.
Whatever duty McCaskill breached by carelessly failing to recall her own past meetings with the Russian ambassador pales when compared to Sessions’ testimony under oath. A tweet is not held to any standard similar to an oath to tell the truth. Sessions’ proper response is, if he’s not sure, is to say that this is true as best he recalls, or otherwise signal that he’s not certain of what he’s saying. That’s incumbent on a man testifying under oath in a bid to become the Attorney General of the United States.
Some senator with a Twitter account should be more careful, yes. But there are miles between the two cases.
I won’t object to anyone’s saying the DNC was hacked.
The election? No. The election was perhaps influenced by the results of the hacking. But that’s not what hacking means.
Of course testimony under oath is held to a higher standard. If we set that aside the legal aspects for a moment, here’s how I think the two can be compared. Sessions gave testimony over a broad range of topics. He could have talked about 100 different things. McCaskill issued a single subject tweet as an attack against Sessions. The purposes of the two are different. I think in general it’s reasonable that as the volume of material being spoken about increases, the chance for error also increases. But when someone is leveling a specific attack on a single subject, they should be circumspect that their attack is valid.
The fact that one was under oath muddies the comparison. If Sessions were merely giving a speech rather than under oath, I think the comparison becomes more apt.
Okay, but even assuming this is so, I’m not sure what the resulting stories would look like if the media was “fair”. To ignore it, or anyone else’s interpretation of whether it was a lie or not, seems to me taking Sessions at his word and doing just as much editorializing.
That’ll do nicely.
The idea that anything in a tweet is automatically of less import than anything said under oath - which seems to be what you’re saying here - is overly legalistic, IMO.
Exhibit A in my favor would be Donald Trump.
All else being equal, something said under oath is a bigger deal than a tweet, of course. But all else is frequently not equal, and wasn’t in this case, for reasons given.
I don’t understand what you’re saying here.
I challenge you to find any MSM reports that imply the Russians hacked into voting machines to mis-report votes. ALL the reports have been that the Russians hacked into computers, and released information that would be harmful to one side only.
Saying that the election was hacked by the Russians is shorthand for all this, but it has never been said, or implied, that voting machines were hacked. I’d wager that the number of people who are informed enough to get a grade of C who think that the Russians hacked voting machines is pretty darn close to zero.
So I call bullshit on your claim.
And I object to the acceptance of the word “literally” informally also meaning “figuratively”.
Yet, here we are.
something said under oath is a bigger deal than a tweet, if for no other reason than penalty of perjury.
Would President Trump repeat under oath his claim that President Obama tapped Trump Tower?
Has Trump offered a shred of evidence, - OR - any ill-gotten gain from this alleged illegal act?
There are many, many, many examples of CNN gratuitiously lying in its reporting, especially in last year’s election cycle, to make Mr. Trump look bad.
1.) [Fake News Alert #308 (Editing 'bomb' comment) - Imgur, also see CNN Edits Hillary’s Response To NYC Attack, Removes The Word ‘Bombing’ | The Daily Caller] On September 18, 2016, there was a bombing attack in New York City, with many reports showing it to be true, although police didn’t issue any confirmation. Trump, accurately, said that a “bomb had went off” in New York City, and CNN ran an article critical of him for it, saying that “Typically, national political figures use caution when describing unfolding situations and law enforcement actions”. However, Hillary Clinton herself called the attack a bombing when first questioned by reporters, saying that “I’ve been briefed about bombings in New York and New Jersey”. CNN edited out this response from Clinton when airing it and then posting it on Twitter, to make it look like Trump was the only one who referred to it as a bombing (and to make him look bad, of course).
2.) CNN ran a pretty ridiculous hit piece against Trump once in a headline. They pointed out how Trump wanted the Republican Party to make inroads with black voters and court them–and then ran a headline saying “Trump wants GOP to court black voters–then slams voting rights for felons.” In a laughable attempt to criticize him, they basically said that black voters are indistinguishable from felons, which is itself racist (Fake News Alert #336 (Blacks = Felons) - Imgur)
3.) CNN repeatedly–and falsely–reported that Trump called for “racial profiling”, when it fact he only called for “profiling” of suspects in a way similar to the fashion in which Israel does it. In other words, they blatantly misquoted him as saying “racial profiling”, when he never used the word “racial” at all. (Fake News Alert #342 (Adding "racial" to Trump's comments) - Imgur)
4.) CNN falsely told its readers in an Oct. 31, 2016 story that he told his supporters to go “vote twice”, when in reality he said nothing of the kind, simply noting that his supporters could void their own ballot and get a new one to vote, and in some places they allowed voters to do it more than once to vote more than once, but specifically said it was something his supporters WOULD NOT do (Fake News Alert #311 (Trump tells supporters to vote twice) - Imgur)
5.) In a rather petulant display of their bias, when interviewing a Trump supporter who rescued a baby from dying of heat in a hot car, they blurred out the logo on his shirt which read “Trump 2016.” A rather strong display of their anti-Trump attitude. (Fake News Alert #303 (Blurring Hero's Trump Shirt) - Imgur)
There are many more examples. And CNN wonders why Trump and his supporters (a group which I am proudly a part of) continually call it Fake News.
I agree. Trump doesn’t need CNN’s help to look bad.