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Sunday, August 21. 2016

American journalism is collapsing before our eyes

Michael Goodwin:



The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.


Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.


Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 14:27 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

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On what planet has Goodwin lived for his past lifetime? I can remember just as uniform an establishment media antipathy to better Republican presidential candidates than Trump. Actually, I'd say that Barry Goldwater provoked even greater liberal hysteria. And, as to treating foreign enemies kindly, Goodwin ought to go back and look at how the MSM behaved during the Vietnam War.
#1 David Zincavage (Link) on 2016-08-21 15:14 (Reply)
Yeah, any time you hear somebody lamenting the lack of balance and fairness in the press you know it's somebody who knows nothing of history and doesn't know who Hearst and Pulitzer were. Newspapers have always been merely a format to push a particular partisan agenda, the idea that they exist to impartially inform the public of The Truth has always been hogwash. There was never some bygone Golden Era of news reporting, it's always been spin and propaganda and misinformation and PR.

I recently looked up some old newspaper archives and, man, the florid and lurid prose they used make The National Enquirer read like the Federal Code. You read stories of how vituperative the rhetoric was toward various candidates - you don't realize that wasn't in the opinion pages, that was in the news articles. The things that were said about Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland or William McKinley - you have to troll Youtube comments to find stuff like that now.
#1.1 Jerryskids on 2016-08-21 16:05 (Reply)
(I should add how rich it is to see a NY Post writer lamenting the sad state of journalism - the NY Post is to journalism as Chuck E Cheese is to fine Italian cuisine.)
#1.1.1 Jerryskids on 2016-08-21 16:13 (Reply)
I can remember Walter Cronkite barely able to conceal his contempt of Republicans and Dan Rather glee reporting on Watergate. The MSM has always in my lifetime been complicit in covering up the Democrat crimes and "trump"ing up the Republican scandals.

What is different now? The Internet. Simple as that. When Walter Cronkite trotted out those phony documents about Bush II he had no reason to believe anyone would contradict him or expose the fraud. But within hours someone who obviously knew more about typewriters and fraudulent documents caught the scam and exposed it. The Internet is not always right. A lot of lies and BS will accompany the truth. But the difference is that before the internet the MSM hid the truth and now it get's out.
#2 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-08-21 16:10 (Reply)
When Walter Cronkite trotted out those phony documents about Bush II he had no reason to believe anyone would contradict him or expose the fraud.
Walter Cronkite?

BTW, both Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather were Texans. Cronkite moved to Texas when he was 10, but graduated from UT Austin.
#3 Gringo on 2016-08-21 17:49 (Reply)
Yeah, Dan Rather of course. my mind must have wandered and... hey look over there..
#3.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2016-08-21 23:37 (Reply)
To say there was a golden age of journalism would mean that one is ignoring a lot. Jerryskids's examples don't start soon enough. Scandalous things - some even with at least a grain of truth - were said about Adams and Jefferson. But for the most part, even though the journalistic integrity was thin, they were reported as fact. It was up to the reader to pick the wheat from the chaff and sometimes the name of the paper was a reader's first clue.

Fast forward to Goodwin's time at the Gray Lady and its illegally publishing the Pentagon Papers. Even though it had jettisoned it's journalistic - and legal - standards, it did show there was government subterfuge concerning the Vietnam war and there is at least a sliver of journalistic - not to mention real political- value in that.

Fast forward again to the Time's publication of Rutenberg's piece. All journalistic pretenses have been discarded. Presumably, these are the same journalists who claim to be objective rather than patriotic and feel it their journalistic duty to accurately report US troop movements since he (the journalist) represents history, not the US. (https://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/communitarian_feedback_n43.html) But now, they are not even representing history, they are representing their opinion. It is their opinion that Trump is unfit to be President so they are justified in trashing him. By extension, they apparently must feel that Hillary is fit (her constant lying about things that matter as well as things that don't, her criminal handling of sensitive government information, and her governmental performance - or lack there of - notwithstanding).

Maybe some of my points are distinctions without a difference. Maybe this is just another example of US press dishonesty that has been going on since the revolution. And one would certainly expect Goodwin to have realized that the press has been predominantly skewed to the left for a long time, but it seems to me that when it comes out and admits it is, we've entered into an era of defiance by the press. What if Hillary no longer felt the need to lie? ("Sure, I kept highly classified information on my unsecured server. So what?" or "Look, it's a shame those guys in Benghazi died, but there were only four of them and they knew what they were getting in to.") Would we be so complacent then?
#4 mudbug on 2016-08-21 17:53 (Reply)
Trump is a threat to the MSM because he can deal with PC, and PC is the draw to the MSM audience, soap opera women.
#5 rhhardin (Link) on 2016-08-21 21:38 (Reply)
I was in the navy and one of the navy regulations is that you must dress appropriately for the activity that you are engaged in. If the media persons were required to follow that rule they would all be dressed like street whores.
#6 Ray on 2016-08-21 23:44 (Reply)
I find that offensive and demeaning to street whores.
#6.1 Jim on 2016-08-22 04:00 (Reply)
The move of the Frankfort School to Columbia explains a lot of the leftist/socialist/communist/globalist shift of journalism to where it is today. It's the new normal and is there for the same reason Pravda was there, for the ruling elites and only the ruling elites....everyone else be damned.
#7 indyjonesouthere on 2016-08-22 16:50 (Reply)

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