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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Media Learned Nothing From 2016
The Media Learned Nothing From 2016
The press hasnt broken its most destructive habits when it comes to covering Donald Trump.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/media-mistakes/616222/?utm_source=twitter&utm_term=2020-09-15T10%3A15%3A01&utm_medium=social&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_campaign=the-atlantic
Were seeing a huge error, and a potential tragedy, unfold in real time.
Thats a sentence that could apply to countless aspects of economic, medical, governmental, and environmental life at the moment. What I have in mind, though, is the almost unbelievable failure of much of the press to respond to the realities of the Trump age.
<<snip>>
Also in pursuit of the ritual of balance, the networks offset coverage of Donald Trumps ethical liabilities and character defects, which would have proved disqualifying in any other candidate for nearly any other job, with intense investigation of what they insisted were Hillary Clintons serious email problems. Six weeks before the election, Gallup published a prophetic analysis showing what Americans had heard about each candidate. For Trump, the words people most recognized from all the coverage were speech, immigration, and Mexico. For Clinton, one word dwarfed all others: EMAIL. The next two on the list, much less recognized, were lie and Foundation. (The Clinton Foundation, set up by Bill Clinton, was the object of sustained scrutiny for supposedly shady dealings that amount to an average fortnights revelations for the Trump empire.) One week before the election, The New York Times devoted the entire top half of its front page to stories about FBI Director James Comeys reopening of an investigation into the emails. New Emails Jolt Clinton Campaign in Races Last Days was the headline on the front pages lead story. With 11 Days to Go, Trump Says Revelation Changes Everything, read another front-page headline.
Just last week came a fresh reminder of the egregiousness of that coverage, often shorthanded as But her emails! On Wednesday, September 9, Bob Woodwards tapes of Trump saying that when it came to the coronavirus, he wanted to always play it down came out, along with a whistleblowers claim that the Department of Homeland Security was falsifying intelligence to downplay the risk of Russian election interference and violence from white supremacists. On the merits, either of those stories was far more important than Comeys short-lived inquiry into what was always an overhyped scandal. But in this election season, each got a demure one-column headline on the Times front page. The Washington Post, by contrast, gave Woodwards revelations banner treatment across its front page.
Who knows how the 2016 race might have turned out, and whether a man like Trump could have ended up in the position he did, if any of a hundred factors had gone a different way. But one important factor was the presss reluctance to recognize what it was dealing with: a person nakedly using racial resentment as a tool; whose dishonesty and corruption dwarfed that of both Clintons combined, with most previous presidents thrown in as well; and whose knowledge about the vast organization he was about to control was inferior to that of any Capitol Hill staffer and most immigrants who had passed the (highly demanding) U.S. citizenship test.
Now its four years later. And were waking up in Groundhog Day, but so far without Bill Murrays eventual, hard-earned understanding that he could learn new skills as time went on. For Murray, those were things like playing the piano and speaking French. For the press, in these next 49 days, those can be grappling with (among other things) three of the most destructive habits in dealing with Donald Trump. For shorthand, they are the embrace of false equivalence, or both-sides-ism; the campaign-manager mentality, or horse-race-ism; and the love of spectacle, or going after the ratings and the clicks.
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dlk
(11,509 posts)It is strangling our democracy.
beachbumbob
(9,263 posts)their role is to diminish biden and democrats. PERIOD
best to pay zero attention to them
CrispyQ
(36,413 posts)I blame Sarah Palin for bringing racist rhetoric into the public sphere. The GOP should have shut her down & when they didn't, the media should have shamed them until they took her off the ballot. But the GOP wanted the racist vote and the media wanted ratings, & here we are.
Yeehah
(4,566 posts)NRaleighLiberal
(60,006 posts)Mike 03
(16,616 posts)A billion dollars in free TV time made it possible for Trump not to spend much money in 2016. And when they played clips of Trump, it didn't matter if they corrected what he said or branded it as a lie, it was still Trump delivering his talking points.
It's f'cking ridiculous that we are going through this again at a moment in history when everything is at stake and every single person knows it.
Bayard
(22,004 posts)Yes, he's getting plenty of free air time with his, "news conferences", but all he does is look like a blathering moron.
As my Mama used to say--Better to look like an idiot than to open your mouth and prove it.
BlueWavePsych
(2,635 posts)2020 is different!
0rganism
(23,920 posts)society's been exposed to some adaptive pressure over the last couple years, maybe it evolved beyond the media
JHB
(37,152 posts)...etc., etc., etc.
However, that lesson was There are no professional consequences for being really bad at political reporting. They all keep their jobs and their seven-figure incomes.
What does get you shown the door? Clearly stating that the problem is not "both sides," it's the Republicans. Just ask Norman Ornstein, former fixture of cable and radio talking head shows, who was effectively excommunicated for his 2012 book stating as much.
tenderfoot
(8,425 posts)The media's primary object is to insure the Status Quo stays put and to keep the citizenry in a constant state of FEAR and RAGE.
And that's what they do.
spanone
(135,781 posts)Baclava
(12,047 posts)He lives by being "in the news" every day, there is no bad press, it dont matter, just keep saying his name, he wins.