I'm with @Mr. X on this one. I went to school for journalism, but quickly changed professions after graduating when I realized that I wasn't always allowed to report the facts because that wasn't what the readership wanted to hear. A person needs to read multiple versions of a news story (by multiple well known newspapers) in order to decipher what the real facts are. Most people don't have the time or energy to do that...I know I don't. It was refreshing to be in Ireland during the last part of the election because the BBC had an outside perspective to the craziness going on in the states...they even called us out on editorializing the election over reporting.
Did he did, or did he did not, state that it was the Electoral College that lost Clinton this essentially unloseable election? Sorry, you don't get to play the false equivalency card to excuse stupid. Stupid is stupid. I'd love to meet these magical "right people". Sorry, Cronkite's dead, and he wasn't a wizard anyway. The Putin propaganda machine has sucked you in too, I see. "All media sucks, so we'll just make up stuff and go with that." That's been the GOP position for a couple decades. Nice to see the liberals coming together with them on it. (/s)
Our little oldies TV station is playing Laugh-In. There was a sketch last night with Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop. They were writing a news story in which 12 Russian fishermen were killed by and American boat went to 12 American fishermen killed by Russian battleship. (paraphrased, I do not remember it exactly) That was the 60's and they were making fun of how news stories are changed from what happened to what people want to hear. I am afraid that altering the news is nothing new.
The worst thing that happened to broadcast news was when the networks realized they could make money from news instead of it being a public service. News departments went from cost centers to profit centers. Stories changed from what people needed to hear to what people wanted to hear.
Hear! Hear! This is true of so many things that used to be a service. Once they are for profit the service dwindles or even vanishes.
Just in the relatively recent history two journalist managed to stop a whole lot of BS. When Joseph McCarthy started accusing everyone of being a Communist, Edward R. Morrow courageously stood up and called that particular jackass on his crap. It ended. Walter Cronkite made only one statement concerning the Vietnam War and it not only ended the presidency of Lyndon Johnson it turned the tide of public opinion against the war. Those two had integrity and everyone knew it. I cannot think of a single person out there today that can make that happen. Think about how two writers for the Washington Post brought down the Nixon Administration, because the public, rightfully, trusted them. They didn't have to say anything, but, they had the courage to call them out about the foolishness of those things. They were able to do that because the public trusted them and they had a good reason to do so. Today, if anyone calls them out, they just come up with a smokescreen and because we, the public doesn't have anyone that they can trust feels helpless and doesn't know who to believe. Right now this country, in my opinion is ripe for the picking and all off you defenders of the Orange menace are leading us all off that cliff. We have had elections before where the popular vote was usurped by the Electoral College, but, this time it took it away from someone with 2,800,000 more then the other and ends up the loser and someone else is president. Even if you were shacking up with Mr. Trump and in line for his fortune I cannot understand how you cannot see that something major is wrong with that. Remember next time, it could just as easily be your candidate. Hope you find it really fair then, however, I doubt that you would ever stop yelling foul. You all are still whining and you won. Can you imagine if you lost. Sad!
Yea, it does save time from having to make up a smokescreen. Those two are prime examples of it. Tell me how we go about trusting any news when no one is showing any courage or leadership or responsibility to anything other then ratings.
But if Morrow or Cronkite, Woodward and Bernstein had to go up against this crew, would their reputation remained intact? Or would the peddlers of fake or misleading news dig around or flat out make up stuff so that the so-called trust the public had in them would also erode? Keith Olbermann on his show Countdown was always calling President Bush out. Rachel Maddow has put together some powerful pieces (and look what Scott Brown's campaign did when they thought she might run against him, forcing her to take out an ad in the Boston Globe to refute the false reports she was running for office). But Keith has a certain personality that everyone knows, and Rachel is formerly from the failed Air America, and both can so easily be cast as "the liberal media." How can anyone even begin to build trust with the public when from early parts of their career one side derides them because they worked for MSNBC, CNN, or other "liberal" institutions that automatically brand them as "not worth your time?"
Nothing magical about reporters with balls and integrity. But I do agree it would take a major cultural shift to fix what is currently a ratings-obsessed infotainment travesty.
And there's no way that you didn't see DOZENS of these people if you were following mainstream news sources during this election! There were reporters at Jared Kushner's newspaper that were posting extremely anti-Trump articles. There was a row of courageous reporters at the back of every Trump rally facing a literal angry mob. And you're right, there IS nothing magical about them. Which is why we're about to get President Trump. CNN sucks, I will gladly grant you that. They've pitched their integrity over the wall in an attempt to compete with Fox. But that's all I'm gonna grant you. None of those reporters Goofyernmost mentioned - Murrow, Cronkite, Woodward, Bernstein - CAUSED the things he mentioned. They reported, and the American people and their representatives did the good stuff. It was US, not them. And it was US that elected Trump. There's no journalism fairy that could come down and make this situation all better. Both Woodward and Bernstein are still around, BTW. They've been VERY vocally anti-Trump. Gee, it hasn't worked. Bottom line ... you really have only two choices when it comes to staying informed: The mainstream media, or your own headcanon plus the loons with an agenda who make stuff up to confirm it. Choose wisely. Quit whining. There's work to be done.
Whether it was anti-Trump articles or pro-Trump puff-pieces or breathless reportings on his latest tweet-tantrum — the "infotainment" part was that they bought into this buffoonery in the first place. Granted, now they have to cover him because he's an important person, but for most of the campaign HE WASN'T. He was just a racist, loudmouthed bloviator the media gave billions of dollars worth of free advertising to, because he sold more papers. THAT'S the part that's wrong, and I include all the "sky is falling" stuff too because most of it was overwrought nonsense simply written for the sake of having more Trump to write for the day.
#1 - Horse hocky. If that's what you saw, then why didn't you switch to one of the dozens of mainstream sources that weren't doing that? Or - even crazier - look at more than one source? #2 - The opinions you just stated to me were regurgitated from opinion pieces on HuffPo. And in one post, you just simultaneously complained that they weren't covering Trump and they were giving him too much coverage. Sorry. Calling you on it. And #3, repeating: You really have only two choices when it comes to staying informed: The mainstream media, or your own headcanon plus the loons with an agenda who make stuff up to confirm it. Choose wisely.
I think that the journalists are trying to report the facts...it's the editors that muddle the truth with by taking quotes out of context by not using it fully. That's why I mentioned it is important to get similar stories from multiple sources...the facts will repeat themselves, but the muck will be different every time.
I'll just mention two reporters who have been dogged and excellent on calling out Trump: Kurt Eichenwald and David Fahrenhold. The trouble was, each of their excellent stories got short shrift on TV for various reasons: obsessions with the horserace rather than substance, some stations' insane insistence on presenting false equivalence and calling it "balance," (i.e. Trump got out of paying taxes for 20 years, but on the other hand, emails; Trump illegally used his Foundation's money, meant for charity, to pay his own legals bills, but on the other hand, emails; Trump sent people to Cuba when doing so was really really really against the law, but on the other hand, emails), and the sheer number of stories about Trump. The Cuba story, for instance, would have derailed anybody else's candidacy in any other election year. It got a whopping one day of coverage on TV because the Times story about his taxes came out the very next day. Paradoxically, the huge number of negative and even disqualifying stories meant that none of them got the attention they deserved (Access Hollywood only did because it was about sex), before we were on to the next thing. But do yourself a favor and review the reporting done this year by Eichenwald and Fahrenhold.
Here's just a little hint of how things would have gone for Walter Cronkite in today's media environment: Walter Cronkite’s Firing Offense and Walter Cronkite wasn't worthy of all that trust we allegedly invested in him.
