Fake image via Powerline
Instapundit has this meme: "If you consider reporters as Democrat operatives with bylines, a lot of things make sense."
Has it become a new normal that "journalists" have come to view themselves as advocates rather than as reporters? In some ways, Trump has removed the veil. I recall how the press protected Obama and Hillary from all of their errors and misdoings, while anything Trump does is wrong.
Maybe you can say that "journalists" see their role as "to make the world better" - by shaping opinion to fit their own. That is fake news, not reporting. Historically, we view it as propaganda.
The arrogance is mind-boggling. My suspicion is that journalists suffer from inferiority feelings because their role is essentially to be observers of things rather than actors, but if you can see yourself on a noble mission to fix the world in your own image, you can feel heroic instead of passive. You not only have the power to frame reality - you have the power to shape it. Bringing down a President would be a great coup.
Trump's public life will never be free of a Russia taint regardless of reality.
Journalism Dies In Self-Importance
Taibbi: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin
Given that “collusion” has turned out to be dry well, to the ordinary viewer it will look a hell of lot like the MSNBCs of the world humped a fake story for two consecutive years in the hopes of overturning election results ahead of time. Trump couldn’t have asked for a juicier campaign issue, and an easier way to argue that “elites” don’t respect the democratic choices of flyover voters. It’s hard to imagine what could look worse.
For the commercial press to recapture any dignity after this collusion debacle, it has to at least start admitting to its role in artificially raising expectations in the last two years. It’s hard to imagine them doing that, however. This story has been so enormously profitable for cable stations, in particular, it will be hard for them to let go of this narrative. What are they going to do, go back to just reporting the news? One can almost feel how depressed network executives must be at the thought. They’ve trained audiences to expect bombshells. What will they sell now?
An answer, from The Week:
This is not a great moment for Trump's critics. We can see that he is a bad president and to watch his defenders proclaim him exonerated is frustrating and troubling. The work to hold this president accountable for his behavior isn't ending, though. Someday — sooner or later — the truth will at long last catch up to Trump. That too might be a painful moment. In the meantime, those who pursue that truth should keep working — and never apologize.
Glenn Greenwald re MSNBC:
“Intercept” co-founder Glenn Greenwald said that MSNBC deliberately lied to its viewers about the credibility of the charges that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to influence the 2016 election, claiming he and other left-wing journalists were banned from appearing on MSNBC due to their skepticism on the issue.
Talking to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Greenwald said that MSNBC “should have their top host on primetime go before the cameras and hang their head in shame and apologize for lying to people for three straight years, exploiting their fears to great profit. These are people who were on the verge of losing their jobs. The whole network was about to collapse. This whole scam saved them. Not only did they constantly feed people for three straight years total disinformation, they did it on purpose.”
Greenwald explained that “There was a whole slew, not just me, of left-wing journalists with very high journalistic credentials, far more than anyone on that network, like Matt Taibbi and Jeremy Scahill and many others… who were banned from the network because they wanted their audience not to know that anybody was questioning or expressing skepticism about the lies and the scam they were selling because it was so profitable.”
