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Thom Friedman: "...one last bid to use the Big Lie to destroy our democracy..."
New York Times
Thomas Friedman
Nov 10 2020
Excerpt:
He and his collaborators are now making one last bid to use the Big Lie to destroy our democracy by delegitimizing one of its greatest moments ever — when a record number of citizens came out to vote, and their votes were legitimately counted, amid a deadly and growing pandemic.
It is so corrupt what Trump and his allies are doing, so dangerous to our constitutional system, but you weep even more for how many of their followers have bought into it.
“Lies don’t work unless they’re believed, and nearly half the American public has proved remarkably gullible,” my former Times colleague David K. Shipler, who served in our Moscow bureau during the Cold War, said to me. “I think of each of us as having our own alarm — and it’s as if half of their batteries have died. Lots of Trump’s lies, and his retweets of conspiracy fabrications, are obviously absurd. Why have so many people believed them? I’m not sure it’s fully understood.”
That is why it’s vital that every reputable news organization — especially television, Facebook and Twitter — adopt what I call the Trump Rule. If any official utters an obvious falsehood or fact-free allegation, the interview should be immediately terminated, just as many networks did with Trump’s lie-infested, postelection, news conference last week. If critics scream “censorship,” just shout back “truth.”
It is so corrupt what Trump and his allies are doing, so dangerous to our constitutional system, but you weep even more for how many of their followers have bought into it.
“Lies don’t work unless they’re believed, and nearly half the American public has proved remarkably gullible,” my former Times colleague David K. Shipler, who served in our Moscow bureau during the Cold War, said to me. “I think of each of us as having our own alarm — and it’s as if half of their batteries have died. Lots of Trump’s lies, and his retweets of conspiracy fabrications, are obviously absurd. Why have so many people believed them? I’m not sure it’s fully understood.”
That is why it’s vital that every reputable news organization — especially television, Facebook and Twitter — adopt what I call the Trump Rule. If any official utters an obvious falsehood or fact-free allegation, the interview should be immediately terminated, just as many networks did with Trump’s lie-infested, postelection, news conference last week. If critics scream “censorship,” just shout back “truth.”
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/opinion/trump-lies.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
13 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Happy old Thom is writing this now - but many years too late.
A complicit unprincipled corporate media hungry for $$$ and those who worked for it that enabled this gross negligence is the reason these lies have stuck.
TRUTH.
GOTV GA
Tired of the corporate media types who want to have their cake and eat ours too.
They are enablers of the current mess we have going on now. Giving legitimacy to minority viewpoints that are nowhere near mainstream.
