Liberal Media Needs to be Better to be Above Reproach

Fox News (AKA Faux News), as others have noted, is now a propaganda arm of the White House in everything but name. It's absurd. What really bothers me is the number of people who take their lying crap seriously. I read a variety of news sources, some from overseas. Some of you might want to consider broadening your news sources. You might learn something.

 

I always find it interesting to read the National Enquirer, etc at the grocery checkout now that Trump is president. It's not a secret that Trump has a relationship there. But the prurient headlines this demographic eats up is a pretty interesting window into the human soul. They go after all of his enemies and his liabilities (Paul Manafort has a headline about a sex scandal). Imagine if this was the primary source of your news consumption: https://www.nationalenquirer.com/tag/donald-trump/

 

Sean Hannity and his crowd keeping it above reproach... of course, connected up with 4-chan

 

LOL...

 

Do you liberals ever wonder why Fox News is so popular?

 

It gets even better:

Fox News propaganda is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

 

How would they know if truth sells or not, when they haven't tried it? I mostly stopped watching, and I know many others who have.

There is a funny line in the Civilization game, with one of the items you can research around printing: "If you don't read the paper, you are uniformed. If you do read the paper, you are misinformed." I think the quote is from Churchill. Applies completely to the media today. The problem is, watchers don't get that they are being misinformed. We are victims of our own stupidity. If we demanded better media, we'd get it. But, we watch whatever program seems to parrot our views...so that's what the media does. Then, you add in that journalism is a liberal art, and that something like 98% of all journalists are liberal, and you have the bias we see today. FOX News sprang up, and became so successful, to fill the void the media left, but it is much the same, just on the right. I will say that actual Fox News, not the opinion shows, gets a bad rap. It has some of the best news coverage, and many of them are not fans of Trump, or at least can be very critical of him.

The problem this causes is our democracy depends on a free press as a counter to government. Not to conservatives. What we have isn't that different than Russian media. The government doesn't control it, but the output is pretty similar. That is bad for our country, and one of the reasons we have the political divide we do. If the press were more objective, politicians would be less prone to cater to the extremes.

 

And the rest of media, which is just as biased to the left? That isn't bad for our country? One could make a very valid argument that, in fact, Fox News propaganda is ESSENTIAL for our democracy, as without it, all you would get is propaganda for the left.

Ideally, we wouldn't have any propaganda in our media, but if you are going to have it, you need it from all sides. If you don't recognize the bias in the rest of media, congratulations, you are part of the problem.

 

False equivalence, truly.

If the Daily Kos distributed a verbatim script to all non-Sinclair outlets, you would have a good point. That would be quite similar. But there's zero evidence of such.

Instead the basic reporting of CBS, AP, Wapo, WSJ, CS Monitor: all fairly fact-based. Not using the same script at all, unless reporting facts is a script.

 

No, actual equivalency, truly. The mainstream media has been highly biased for decades, but has swung just as far left now as Fox is right. Probably even moreso. Fox's opinion shows are clearly biased to the right. EVERYTHING from the rest of the media is biased to the left. The difference is merely that it doesn't get portrayed that way. Fox's hard news is actually pretty good, and frequently critical of Trump. But I've mostly stopped watching all news, because it all sucks. If I want propaganda, I can easily find it online. The mainstream news isn't mainstream, hasn't been for a long time. If it had been, Fox News wouldn't even exist.

Handing Clinton the debate questions? Having a script prior to the inauguration (before Trump had actually done, literally, anything) comparing the administration to Nazi Germany? The every day Russia Russia Russia, which has been substantiated as their intentional message? There are literally thousands of similar examples. This is following the Democratic script to a T. They are the defacto propaganda arm of the left, shrouded in the perception of not being such. Anyone who doesn't see this is part of the problem.

It isn't whether you report facts, it is which facts are reported, and how they are reported. The liberal media has been highly biased for decades, that is what caused Fox News to spring up. In the last year or two, they have abandoned all sense of impartiality. They intentionally slant everything left. How is that any different than Fox? It isn't. At all. WSJ is pretty objective. But its purpose is business news, and cutting through the chaff to get to things that are actually business related. If only the rest of the media did the same.

It will eventually self correct. News viewership at the main networks is down, and rightfully so.

It's painfully obvious, and should be so to everyone. When 98% of its constituents all vote one way, how on earth would anyone think their coverage wouldn't be slanted the same way? Combine this with the death of journalism, and the uprising of sensationalism, and it would only be surprising if their coverage weren't highly slanted. But the only really surprising thing is just how badly and openly slanted it is now. Which I personally think is great. Open the kimono, and start to show what's inside...eventually people will start to see it for what it is, or their coverage will actually start to become more objective. Either of those is a good thing.

FWIW, I and many others I know, have had this opinion for a long long time. Long before Trump, we aren't just parroting his recent bashing of the media. We do applaud it, though. It is long overdue. Our country would be much better off if we had the press do its job.

 

No, it isn't the same at all. The left has not issued scripts to stations and ordered them to follow scripts. MAinstream media has many other biases that outweigh any political bias. They want to get a scoop, not miss a major story, maintain credibility, be profitable all more than they worry about any political bias. Some of those biases mean that similar news stories will appear in multiple outlets. But that isn't the same as a political script being handed out and followed by the conservative corporate bosses.

 

Absolutely they have...have you not followed any of the reports of CNN dictating exactly this to its reporters? They followed the script to a T, and continue to do so (Russia, Russia, Russia, etc).

And what about giving the debate questions to Clinton. If there were an 'actual' press, they'd be investigating the collusion between Clinton and the MSM, which is actual collusion, not alleged.

Maintain credibility??? Hardly. They lost credibility long long ago. Maintain the appearance of credibility, surely....they depend on that. They don't want to get a scoop...news stopped doing journalism decades ago. What they want to do, instead, is sway the news, or at least stir up enough sensationalism that people watch the news. Has been their goal for decades. And they have also found that swaying even farther left in today's climate raised their numbers...so they did. But they were doing this prior to Trump being elected. They didn't talk about CNN being the Clinton News Network for nothing. it was patently obvious they were trying to sway the election. You could clearly see this as the results of the election came in. You don't see bias there? How about all the slips, again for decades, on reporters saying 'we' when they mean Democrats? The MSM has been following the script for years, going back to Rather and CBS. They push a liberal agenda. Have for decades. It's high time they started being called out on it.

 

CNN is one network. It isn't a corporation giving a script to scores of networks that they all have to follow.

It depends on what story you are talking about with Hillary and debate questions. There was some fake news about it.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/clinton-received-debate-questions-week-before-debate/

She was given a question by Donna Brazile. She was told that someone would ask her about what she would do in regards to the contamination of water in Flint Michigan. That isn't acceptable, and CNN fired Brazile after that. So it wasn't something directed by the mainstream media.

I'm curious, how much effect do you think Clinton's answer to the question about water in Flint Michigan had on the nomination?

I don't know how many professional journalists you know, but you seem to have bought into a lot of hype. Most of them are professionals who care about doing a good job, and they take their job seriously. They aren't perfect and there are bad ones out there.

Of course, when they make mistakes, they usually issue corrections and retractions and strive to fix their mistakes. You can contrast that with some glitches made by conservative outlets.

 

Hahaha. I knew a family that DID follow that magazine, and was firmly convinced it was the best source of news!

And then this was confirmed in Men in Black! ;-)

The interesting question is ...how different is National Enquirer from the more reputable newspapers out there now? The gap isn't nearly as wide as it was before....

 

What is the difference? You are splitting some fine hairs. Net effect is IDENTICAL. Both have a script, both scripts are completely biased do one side of the political ledger, and both follow it.

That it happened at all is simply indicative of the problem. If there weren't a concerted effort by the network to try to sway the election, such an event wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Little to none. The news of her getting the question in advance probably had a bigger impact.

Hard to 'buy into the hype' when 'the hype' didn't exist at the time. I've been very frustrated with the MSM for decades. As have many others I know.

I don't disagree. The problem is two fold. First, the journalists do what they are told, and what they are being told to do conflicts heavily with the concept of objective, in depth reporting. Networks don't do journalism, they cater to demand, and demand tells them stir up controversy and milk it for as long as you can. 'Real' news started dying off in the 70's, as networks realized they were losing money.

It isn't about mistakes. It is about the overall, pervasive nature of the coverage. You can be HIGHLY biased, and yet report nothing but facts, simply through choice of which facts and how they are portrayed. There are plenty of such 'mistakes' that never were corrected. One of the better examples of this was Trump's first news conference, in which he remained very calm and engaging throughout the conference, SAID that it would get reported as him having a rant against the press, and then the press went out and did just exactly that. Another example was the ridiculous questions that came about when the doctor had a news conference on Trump's health and test reports. You simply cannot watch that and not see the EXTREME level of bias present in the media.

You also can't have objective reporting when the reporting is coming from a group that leans 98% one way in every election. Human nature takes over. Combine that with the clear desires of the MSM companies themselves, and viola...you have a completely biased MSM.

 

Pandering?

 

BS.

That doctor used the flattery trap card towards Trump to advance his career. It worked of course because it's Trump. News organizations are going to be blown back by a proffesional doctor stating that Trump had the genetics to love till 200 years old and has near perfect health for a man who has a horrible diet whole loving a sedentary lifestyle. Any rational mind would find those finding odd and when you relaloze there is absolutely zero reppurcussions for the doctor to exaggerated claims about his health and on top of that has an immediate tangible impact on his progression of his career, well...

That's your motive right there .

Also, the doctor made claims about Trump's mental health over a simple exam where the toughest question is drawing a cube and where the only conclusion one can draw from the exam if they score perfect is that they don't have eearly signs of dementia. I think we all know there are far more issues in regards to mental health than dementia and no way a single exam like that would have any proffesional doctor without a motive to make a blanket statements about his mental health.

 

I'm not splitting hairs. There is a huge difference. Covering the same story isn't the same as dictating a script that is complete with biases.

Regardless of the rest of your argument, you have overextended here. Claiming it was an effort by the network isn't backed up by any evidence at all. In fact, the network terminated the individual responsible.

I mostly agree with all of this.

Whether or not he was calm it is accurate to say that he went off the deep end. He did.

Except the desires of the MSM don't start and end with political affiliation. I listed things that they care about more.

 

Trump put a target on himself with the media. Hard to put that genie back in the bottle, esp with increased ratings and subscriptions.

It's true that the media should pick and choose their debates better. They're doing his job for him given the limited attention span people have.

Too many ***** to give inside the shitsstorm, not enough time and energy.