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The Media are the Goddam Problem

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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#151

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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#152

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1 ... redibility

The media tried to raise a red tsunami, but the only thing washed away was their credibility


On Tuesday morning, NBC’s Today show devoted their first hour to analyzing the election. In that hour, they made several points: People were most concerned about the economy and inflation, President Joe Biden is very unpopular, and while Democrats have talked about threats to democracy, they have failed to create a coherent “message” that reassured voters. Not one time in that hour was the word “abortion” mentioned. At that point, the pundits sat back to determine whether the red wave would merely swamp the House or whether it would be a Senate-clearing tsunami.

It wasn’t just Today. Every news organization was pushing the same three things:

People are mostly concerned about inflation.
This is a referendum on Joe Biden.
Democrats haven’t established a clear message.
And why shouldn’t they be convinced of those things? National media has been selling every one of those messages, and selling them hard, for more than a year. But on Tuesday night, the American people gave a response.

People are very concerned about their rights.
Donald Trump and the movement he created are highly unpopular.
Republican policies are still exactly what they were in the 2020 platform: nonexistent.

And all this happened with tremendous support for Republicans up and down the media. It wasn’t just Fox News carrying their water every day, it was every three-letter broadcast network, every 24/7 news channel, and every supposedly neutral political site. Here’s an absolutely 24K gold example from Politico. Their own polls showed Democrats ahead in critical races in and in generic preference. But this is what they wrote, completely ignoring what the polls—again, their own polls—were telling them.
Voters often treat midterm elections as a referendum on the president and his party, which suggests that support for Democrats is on the wane, and many polling averages indicate that voters are more inclined to vote for Republicans as a result. The POLITICO-Morning Consult poll is an outlier on this question, showing support for Democratic congressional candidates at 48 percent, five points above support for Republican candidates.
They declared the results of their own poll an outlier. And what was Nate Silverman doing over at 538? He was busy defending a decision to add dozens of last minute “polls” put together by Republican outfits no one had ever heard of before, which were clearly designed for no reason other than to give the false appearance of a Republican surge. His response: Democrats should just put out their own fake polls to “balance” the results.
This is a gotta read so I violated the 4 para Rule.
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#153

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/nbc-n ... r-AA1470Xi
NBC News Suspends Reporter for Retracted Paul Pelosi Story

(This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the newsletter pulling back the curtain on the media. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.)

NBC Today show correspondent Miguel Almaguer has been suspended pending an internal investigation after NBC News had to retract his reporting that inflamed right-wing conspiracy theories about the brutal assault on Paul Pelosi, Confider has learned.

In an on-air report that went viral soon after it aired Almaguer suggested Nancy Pelosi’s husband was not in danger when cops arrived at their San Francisco home.

“After a ‘knock and announce,’ the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police,” Almaguer reported on the morning of November 4. “It’s unclear if the 82-year-old was already injured or what his mental state was, say sources.”

Hours later, the report—which was based on an unnamed source seemingly contradicting the claims of both prosecutors and police—was retracted and video of the segment was scrubbed from NBC’s website. “This piece has been removed from publication because it did not meet NBC News reporting standards," NBC wrote in a note replacing the article.


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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#154

Post by Kriselda Gray »

CNN Facebook to stop fact checking Trump after he announces he's running again. Apparently, this goes for all politicians who hold or are running for office.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/politics ... index.html
Facebook’s fact-checkers will need to stop fact-checking former President Donald Trump following the announcement that he is running for president, according to a company memo obtained by CNN.

While Trump is currently banned from Facebook, the fact-check ban applies to anything Trump says and false statements made by Trump can be posted to the platform by others. Despite Trump’s ban, “Team Trump,” a page run by Trump’s political group, is still active and has 2.3 million followers.

:snippity:

Facebook’s parent company Meta pays third-party fact-checking organizations to apply fact-check labels to misinformation across Facebook and Instagram.

The carve-out is not exclusive to Trump and applies to all politicians, but given the rate fact-checkers find themselves dealing with claims made by the former president, a manager on Meta’s “news integrity partnership” team emailed fact-checkers on Tuesday ahead of Trump’s announcement.

“Some of you have reached out seeking guidance regarding fact-checking political speech in anticipation of a potential candidacy announcement from former President Trump,” the Meta staffer wrote in the memo.

The company has long had an exception to its fact-checking policy for politicians.

“It is not our role to intervene when politicians speak,” Meta executive Nick Clegg, a former politician, said in 2019, defending the exemption.

The Meta memo sent to fact-checkers made clear that if Trump announced a 2024 presidential bid Tuesday night, he could no longer be fact-checked on the platform.

The memo noted that “political speech is ineligible for fact-checking. This includes the words a politician says as well as photo, video, or other content that is clearly labeled as created by the politician or their campaign.”
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#155

Post by raison de arizona »

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” —John Adams
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#156

Post by pipistrelle »

They’ll say it’s fair because it applies to all, even the non-liars.
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#157

Post by p0rtia »

A visual representation (well, sorta) of what bugs me most about the MSM. Expecially the NYT. ETA: WaPo gives an example of how it should be done. Every. Damn. Time.
WP v NYT.jpg
WP v NYT.jpg (94.61 KiB) Viewed 2407 times
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#158

Post by Foggy »

Trump, seeking revenge for his humiliating loss in 2020, despite falsely denying he lost, announced his candidacy for 2024.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#159

Post by pipistrelle »

I like the WaPo one.
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#160

Post by Phoenix520 »

The story about CNN not fact-checking is actually about Facebook not fact checking.
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#161

Post by p0rtia »

pipistrelle wrote: Wed Nov 16, 2022 11:26 am I like the WaPo one.
Yes. I should have clarified that WaPo is the correct model to how to cover this shit.
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#162

Post by Kriselda Gray »

Phoenix520 wrote: Wed Nov 16, 2022 11:37 am The story about CNN not fact-checking is actually about Facebook not fact checking.
Oops! My bad. I fixeded it.
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#163

Post by Foggy »

dammit. :cussing:

Top three stories on Washington Post right now:

1. Elon Musk, sorry, Twitter not the biggest thing going on in the world today,
2. Saudi Arabia beats Argentina in soccer, in case sports is the most important thing to you
3. Why don't more men take their wives' last name? :doh:


The Washington Post has become the Oprah Show.
Out from under. :thumbsup:
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The Media are the Goddam Problem

#164

Post by RTH10260 »

Foggy wrote: Tue Nov 22, 2022 2:01 pm dammit. :cussing:

Top three stories on Washington Post right now:

1. Elon Musk, sorry, Twitter not the biggest thing going on in the world today,
2. Saudi Arabia beats Argentina in soccer, in case sports is the most important thing to you
3. Why don't more men take their wives' last name? :doh:


The Washington Post has become the Oprah Show.
He may have a point there - Tesla stock is not at its best :twisted:
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#165

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1 ... g-pictures
White House press corps grouses about Biden 'lies' after being scooped on family wedding pictures

Good news, everybody: Our political press is now completely back to normal. Donald Trump threw them for a loop, what with his constant breaking of laws big and small, attempted extortion of a foreign government, a violent attempted coup, and transformation of Republicanism into an anti-democratic propaganda force—but never mind that! It is time to get back to what the "political" press in this country does best, ignoring all that highbrow nation-endangering stuff to focus on digging for access and huffing about perceived minor slights.

It's time to go hunting for tan suits and presidential haircuts, everybody. You know, real political scandals.

At issue today: Naomi Biden is getting married, I guess, which is news to all of us who forgot who Naomi Biden is because we don't follow such things obsessively and because Naomi Biden hasn't been commandeered by her father or grandfather to be a half-assed White House "presidential adviser" and so has had damn little to do with presidential politics. The private wedding was/is to be held on White House grounds, probably in no small part to avoid the absolute zoo it would become if the sitting president had to travel elsewhere for it. Sure, whatever, don't care. Except we must care, by God in heaven, because the normal White House press corps got scooped on a photo shoot for the event, and that makes it everybody’s problem.

Yes, Vogue was given the go-ahead to do the pre-wedding photo shoot, which is not the same as photographing the wedding itself. And yes, the wedding's still closed to the press, just like the White House said. But somebody who is not the White House press got a photo shoot behind the White House press' backs, and this makes the Biden Administration big dirty liars just like that last guy. Harumph to you, sir. Harumph to you and all in your employ.

No, the lesson here is that this is the political coverage the White House press corps was designed to do. Was meant to do. We’re finally back to the petty fashion show stuff the White House press is actually good at. The stuff about violent coup breaks their brains, and they couldn’t process a president attempting to extort a foreign power for purely personal benefit because if the important people standing at lecterns say there's no big deal there, the hands of the press corps are tied. They’ve done all they can do.
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#166

Post by RTH10260 »

:o WH Photogate :!:

:doh:
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#167

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

RTH10260 wrote: Tue Nov 29, 2022 9:28 pm :o WH NoPhotogate :!:

:doh:
FIFY. :biggrin:
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#168

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/1 ... Not-Access
Why National Political Coverage is Abysmal - It's Not Access

Access is Not a Dirty Word

Another criticism of which Haberman is a prime example is that some of the national press holds scoops to use in books. Again, this is not the most important issue to me. The ethics of whether journalists save tidbits for books is between them and their editors.

There is a real problem with withholding information though, and Haberman is a prime example. From her book we know she knew about a lot of the chaos and criminality of the Trump administration, but the stories she wrote in real time time didn’t reflect what was going on in her beat. Despite what she knew about Trump and his staff, she wrote many dozens of stories that in real time reflected a normalcy that she and (I presume) her editors knew not to be true.

The Right Perspective

National political media (in general, certainly there are many excellent reporters) are great at writing stories that are true but the perspective sucks because they focus on topics that are irrelevant (but her emails!) introduced in bad faith (Democrats in disarray! Real Americans in Ohio diners! Are Dems pedophiles? etc.) or whataboutism (sure, Republicans incited an insurrection, but Biden was dishonest about a wedding invite). The recent Twitter files are a prime example, a bunch of mostly true facts that are being hyped to make ridiculous and blatantly false assertions about media bias. The Twitter bruhaha is an example of purposeful twisting of facts to feed the Fox frenzy, but it happens even when bias is not an issue.

There are a lot of theories as to why this is, including bias of liberal or conservative bent. I think, however, that for most of the national newspapers and media outlets something else is going on. To me, they’re gauging the quality of their coverage by how the partisans react. In other words, if both sides complain, editors at the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, etc., see that as proof they’re balanced and doing right.

It’s All About the Readers

To me, however, that’s the wrong standard. The test isn’t quoting each side 50% or getting an equal number of complaints from each side. As a journalist the first and only standard is whether your articles provide an accurate and informative picture of what’s going on in your beat to readers.
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#169

Post by AndyinPA »

:yeahthat:
"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears… To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies." -Octavia E. Butler
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#170

Post by p0rtia »

This is a Reuters article about the effects of the new Chinese COVID regulations.

It does not mention the word "vaccine" or any form thereof.

WTF?
China races to bolster health system as COVID surge sparks global concern
By Bernard Orr and Xinghui Kok

BEIJING/SINGAPORE, Dec 20 (Reuters) - Cities across China scrambled to install hospital beds and build fever screening clinics on Tuesday as authorities reported five more deaths and international concern grew about Beijing's surprise decision to let the virus run free.

China this month began dismantling its stringent "zero-COVID" regime of lockdowns and testing after protests against curbs that had kept the virus at bay for three years but at a big cost to society and the world's second-largest economy.

Now, as the virus sweeps through a country of 1.4 billion people who lack natural immunity having been shielded for so long, there is growing concern about possible deaths, virus mutations and the impact on the economy and trade.
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#171

Post by Suranis »

p0rtia wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:59 am This is a Reuters article about the effects of the new Chinese COVID regulations.

It does not mention the word "vaccine" or any form thereof.

WTF?
That's partially because the Chinese Government has been pushing Chinese superiority in everything, and that went to only using a Chinese made vaccine. Unfortunately their vaccine had a rating of "kinda sucked," so hyper lockdowns were the only option. But now that's ending, and for political reasons they cant bring in a foreign vaccine.
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#172

Post by keith »

Suranis wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:33 pm
p0rtia wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:59 am This is a Reuters article about the effects of the new Chinese COVID regulations.

It does not mention the word "vaccine" or any form thereof.

WTF?
That's partially because the Chinese Government has been pushing Chinese superiority in everything, and that went to only using a Chinese made vaccine. Unfortunately their vaccine had a rating of "kinda sucked," so hyper lockdowns were the only option. But now that's ending, and for political reasons they cant bring in a foreign vaccine.
:yeahthat: Exactly
Has everybody heard about the bird?
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#173

Post by p0rtia »

keith wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:05 pm
Suranis wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:33 pm
p0rtia wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:59 am This is a Reuters article about the effects of the new Chinese COVID regulations.

It does not mention the word "vaccine" or any form thereof.

WTF?
That's partially because the Chinese Government has been pushing Chinese superiority in everything, and that went to only using a Chinese made vaccine. Unfortunately their vaccine had a rating of "kinda sucked," so hyper lockdowns were the only option. But now that's ending, and for political reasons they cant bring in a foreign vaccine.
:yeahthat: Exactly
It was REUTERS, not the Chinese Gov. I'm still in shock.
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#174

Post by Suranis »

I guess if the Chinese did not mention Vaccines as part of their plans, then Reuters would not mention them either.

Is kinda curious though.
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#175

Post by Tiredretiredlawyer »

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ ... ing-office
The Right Way to Cover Election Deniers Running for Office
To properly inform voters, the media must consistently highlight the extreme views of candidates who spread false claims about elections.

The 2022 campaign presented the political press corps with an unprecedented challenge — how to cover candidates who deny the validity of elections. Repeating the unfounded claims that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected in 2020 is a political stance far different than, say, advocating for lower taxes or wanting to restrict abortion rights. Election deniers challenge the very premise of democracy, while candidate debates over government spending and social issues represent the essence of what democracy is all about. As such, media coverage of election denial candidates should appropriately reflect just how antithetical their views are to the normal political process.

In the end, the 2022 elections proved unkind to election deniers as voters rejected most of the prominent proponents of these false charges. But for the mainstream media, the issues raised by candidates decrying a “stolen election” did not end on November 8. The validity of the 2020 presidential race will likely continue to be questioned in future election campaigns. Moreover, other analogous antidemocratic challenges may also emerge in 2024 and beyond. It is not hard to imagine the rise of 2024 candidates who echo Donald Trump in talking about suspending parts of the Constitution or even discussing the merits of a military coup. So it remains relevant to question what standards political reporters should employ in chronicling the campaigns of candidates who undermine American democracy itself.

To scrutinize the journalistic treatment of election deniers, I examined local media coverage in the closing weeks of the campaigns of four election denial candidates for governor. Gubernatorial candidates were chosen because governors have far more sway over election administration than senators and garner far more press coverage than contenders for other relevant statewide offices, such as secretary of state. All four states that were studied — Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — were closely contested in the 2020 presidential race and are likely to be again in 2024. These are the candidates focused on:

Kari Lake of Arizona

Tudor Dixon

Tim Michels

Doug Mastrian

The methodology for this paper was to read and analyze every news story and news analysis piece during the three weeks before Election Day in each of the four states’ leading newspapers: the Arizona Republic, Detroit Free Press, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Philadelphia Inquirer. Yes, regional newspapers have been hollowed out and have but a fraction of their former readership. But even in their diminished condition, these newspapers shape political attitudes and heavily influence television coverage in their states. By chance, all of these newspapers except for the Philadelphia Inquirer are owned by Gannett. To make sure that the trends in coverage that I noted are not limited to Gannett papers, I also examined news stories in the Detroit News (owned by Digital First Media) about Tudor Dixon’s campaign.

Kari Lake
The Arizona Republic’s coverage of Lake in her unsuccessful battle against then-Secretary of State Katie Hobbs was ambivalent. The newspaper could be hard-hitting: An October 20 article by reporter Stacey Barchenger on election reforms began with Lake refusing to say that she would accept the results of her race and stressed in the third paragraph that the gubernatorial contest “seems like it has one foot in 2020, thanks in large part of Lake’s repeated false claims that Joe Biden was illegitimately elected.” Similarly, a news analysis by Barchenger that ran on October 30 was headlined “In Kari Lake’s campaign for governor, misinformation and deception remain hallmarks.”

But at other times, the Arizona Republic made it difficult for voters to learn that Lake’s views on democracy were outside the political mainstream. Lengthy compare-and-contrast articles on education (October 18) and the economy (October 19) outlined Lake’s and Hobbs’s views without giving the slightest hint that one of the two candidates trafficked in misinformation. Sometimes, the paper’s reporters merely played stenographers. For example, the final dispatch from the campaign trail on November 7 colorfully recounted a Phoenix rally in which Lake strode onstage with “American Woman” playing from the loudspeakers. Election denial was never mentioned.

Doug Mastriano
In contrast to the understated and uninformative daily coverage of Dixon and Michels, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s treatment of Doug Mastriano in its news columns was refreshing in its blunt recognition that his was not a normal political campaign. Mastriano, to be sure, made it easy for the Inquirer with his flirtation with QAnon adherents and the prominent roles in his campaign played by extreme election deniers.

A full-length October 18 profile of Mastriano by reporter Chris Brennan reflected the tenor of the Inquirer’s coverage. The article highlighted Mastriano’s uncooperative appearance before the January 6 committee, and it reminded readers that “Mastriano supported efforts to have the legislature send a pro-Trump slate of electors to Congress, spoke with Trump in the aftermath of the election, and was present on Capitol grounds the day of the riot.”

Again and again, the Inquirer stressed that Mastriano’s views on the 2020 election were both extreme and fallacious. A capsule portrait of Mastriano in an October 25 article, billed as a “Voter’s Guide,” described him as “one of the most prominent election deniers in Pennsylvania.” That story was followed by an October 26 look at the volunteers who were powering Mastriano’s underfunded campaign. The piece emphasized that the candidate had built a passionate right-wing following through “his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, echoing Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.” In a similar fashion, a November 1 article on Democrats campaigning in deeply Republican areas succinctly described Mastriano as a “QAnon supporter and Capitol insurrectionist.”

The news business, with its emphasis on what just occurred, has a built-in bias against repetition. Writing a story a second time — even if such a story is necessary to provide context — can be dismissed as “old news.”

The unfortunate result of this journalistic reflex was that “election denial” as an issue became siloed off in the coverage of gubernatorial races in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. To their credit, the Arizona Republic, the two Detroit newspapers, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all ran detailed stories on the records of gubernatorial candidates peddling discredited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. But once having written those articles, the newspapers then avoided referring to election denial on a regular basis. As a result, a voter who had read up on, say, the economic policies of Kari Lake or the educational proposals of Tim Michels would have no idea that either candidate was also fueling “stolen election” conspiracy theories.

Journalistic passivity played a role here. As I have observed over a half century of writing about politics, many political reporters and editors believe that the candidates themselves should frame the contours of campaign coverage, with journalists only emphasizing the topics being raised in battling TV ads and in debates. Under this mistaken reasoning, election denial only becomes a major issue if it is stressed by the candidate or their rival. The allure of horse race coverage also contributed to downplaying the extremism of candidates who refuse to accept Biden as the legitimately elected president.

That’s why the Philadelphia Inquirer should serve as a model for future coverage of candidates who challenge the basic premises of American democracy. The Inquirer took pains to convey Doug Mastriano’s outside-the-mainstream views in almost every article about his campaign. “QAnon supporter and Capitol insurrectionist” became as much a part of Mastriano’s political identity in the Inquirer as his day job as a state senator. These aspects of Mastriano’s persona obviously did not have to be the centerpiece of every article, but they rightfully should have been mentioned as often as possible.

One of the biggest challenges facing the political press corps in the years ahead is to avoid normalizing candidates who cast doubt on the integrity of our election system. Consistently telling the truth about such election deniers and Constitution rejectors remains the best way to inform voters. And the essence of democracy is trusting voters to make the right decisions once they have all the facts at their disposal.

"Mickey Mouse and I grew up together." - Ruthie Tompson, Disney animation checker and scene planner and one of the first women to become a member of the International Photographers Union in 1952.
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