Just posting this from Salon today about both sideism:
"Allsop goes on to note three particular problems, starting with Brian Beutler’s observation of a perverse inequivalence : “the commonplace journalistic assumption that ‘Republican bad faith … is just a feature of the landscape,’ whereas a given Democrat is ‘an actor with agency, and subject to scrutiny.’” Along the same lines, Beutler earlier wrote, “Baking the presumption of GOP bad faith into everything, rather than treating it as a series of choices by human agents, creates a kind of impunity (through exhaustion or savviness or whatever else) where it isn’t even worth pressing them on their conduct.”
"Once the press accepted and normalized Gingrich’s tactics, Democrats were at a perpetual disadvantage, so much so that framing anything “as being Bad News for Democrats, but not for Republicans” was simply a way of reflecting how much the game had been rigged in advance. Finally, the brain-dead analysis reflects the media’s tendency to record and accept Republican descriptions of their fantasy world, and then to pretend it reflects reality. "
Fox (at least the main website, I never watch the network news operation) has plenty of stuff criticizing Biden (mostly over Covid-19 policy), but with extra emphasis on gaffes. They had a whole feature the other day debunking the Biden claim that he once drove an 18-wheeler. It’s powerhouse investigative journalism.
There would be even more anti-Biden stories, but they have to save space to pound on Fauci.
That is really well-observed and expressed—thanks for posting it.
Even though this is the FoxNews thread it’s worth noting that the non-Fox outlets and individual journalists are falling into the trap Brian Beutler noted on a regular basis. Just the other day longtime Trump Admin critic Walter Shaub tried to convince his Twitter readers that the Hunter Biden art-show* was a scandal worthy of the main headline in every news medium.
(Which is not exactly what Beutler was saying, but is in the ‘hold Dems to a higher standard’ ballpark.)
\
*Admittedly unsavoury, but scarcely on a par with the Trump-nepotism scandals.
Pounding on Fauci is another sign of desperation. And they keep on the senile joe meme. If I wasn’t so worried about everything I would say that Fox and all right wing news will become too boring and static to maintain a tabloid trained viewership.
Yes. it’s on CNN a lot. The host will let a R lie a lot, then try to pin them down and fail, but still maintaining the comity and then there is the definite sense that there is a fear of taking Republicans anywhere they don’t feel like going, (2nd amendment solutions?) so they just say “Thanks. Look forward to next time.” Lies advance in the public sphere. Dems are demoralized.
The next segment will be a Democrat and the host will feel they have to bat them around a little so they don’t appear “biased.” The questions will boil down to “Why can’t you do what Republicans are stopping you from doing? What is the PROBLEM?” The tone and the face will tell a whole other tale from when there is a conservative on. They are the home town kids and they have to get hazed. They are doing the actual businesss of government so they have to get punished and finish last I guess.
This is mostly OT here, but the fox version of this is the performative hate and contempt that hosts and heads display to train the audience to hate liberalism, and to virtue signal. It needs a proper study and run down.
Absolutely (and it’s possible that someone is doing one–it would do a lot of good).
One way to do a study with a focus narrow enough to be not-unwieldy might be to look just at the daily White House Press Briefings. Of course the very fact that such things exist—a very marked difference from the Trump years—should be noted prominently.
They’re shown on C-SPAN and I try to catch them often. The questions from the right-wing outlets are obviously made in bad-faith (and watching Jen Psaki bat them down is always entertaining). But the CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NY Times and other ‘centrist’ outlets are quite prone to the sort of unfair slamming that Beutler wrote about.
(I often think those seats should be fitted with electric-shocking devices, which would activate each time a reporter harangues Psaki for not being able to give an exact date when ‘we’ll be back to normal’ and the like.)
i watch these things closely and I feel that Tuckums, Laura, and the crew are feeling the pain in the present moment, and they have never been a more target rich environment for dragging, trolling, and ratfucking (Within all laws of course) . It’s in the desperation, in the facial expressions and in common sense, facts that we all share and they deny to their “public.” They know something is going to burst.
Since they are fascists the process of publicly shaming them, video clipping them to death with their hypocrisy, and bringing them to prosecution if possible, should have started as soon as a reasonable person could see the tea leaves, IOW in summer 2015. There is no other way to deal with them.
One can’t help but notice all the warnings righties give off about what shame, and humiliation mean to them. (Masks?) Time to take them at their word and give them what they have been asking for and needing forever now. They wont stop until they are shamed out of hate and fascism.
It would be possible to clip the fox hosts, make a reel of lies and antidemocratic incitements. It would be possible to not let any of these people appear anywhere without being asked to correct or affirm their cable broadcast of public lies affecting safety. You could not have people on who lie. Lots of stuff.
How about every guest on TV gets asked who’s president and if they don’t answer get the fuck out.
The hosts play a game where they are never seen saying something that some yahoo wouldn’t like.
Tough noogies. To address fascism you have to go and systematically make those people say it on video. How many times has this not happened lately. No one gets asked to answer the hard questions.
Tucker will be able to run for potus if no one makes him do this.
Lying fucks have their YouTube account suspended for being lying fucks. I’m kinda surprised. It doesn’t surprise me they are lying fucks. It just surprises me they are lying fucks without the nous to know there are places they can’t get away with being lying fucks.
[auto correct on my iPhone really really doesn’t want me to say “fucks”]
This news story has a lot of good things about it. (But Oh those comments?!)
They show nice pics of the mans vacation and under each picture they clip a little bit of the story he had to tell and the corrections he made to lies.
A developing story has been hitting Twitter hard today: the horse-worms drug that Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have been urging their viewers to go to vet stores to buy----and to take instead of COVID-19 vaccines----has been exposed as being, well, okay for horses with worms, but not so good for humans: