It is the Media's Job to be Mean to President Trump

Yesterday Senator Jeff Flake got on the floor of the Senate and criticized the president. Some of that speech seemed somewhat self-serving, other parts seemed completely accurate and fair. However, your opinion of that speech will almost certainly depend on your partisan alignment. What shouldn't be up for debate though, was one thing he said of extreme importance. Senator Flake said...

It is the job of the media to speak truth to power and to hold power to account. When Fox News gives Donald Trump a free pass for everything he does, they are abdicating their duties to American democracy. It is their job to criticize the powerful, no matter what party they belong to. In the same way, MSNBC abdicated it's duties when President Obama was the president.

The media should never be unbiased nor should it be fair to the powerful. The powerful have power and with their power they can defend themselves from criticism.The powerful do not need the media to protect them or defend them. When the media does so, it does an enormous disservice to our body politic. It also undermines their criticisms of the powerful on the other side of the partisan divide, because people automatically assume bias. I don't listen to Fox News criticize Obama, nor do I listen to them defend Trump. I don't listen to MSNBC criticize Trump, nor do I listen to them defend Obama, because I know it is usually self-serving lies. What happens when they have an important story to tell? No one listens because it is like the boy who cried wolf.

So long story short, people should stop buying the products Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN are selling because they are bad products. Instead demand your media holds power to account in all instances. This will of course never happen, but if it did, it would go a long way towards fixing our current political malaise.

 

IMO, it depends on what you define as the "media".

If you are referring to the "News" media, it is not their job to criticize the President, or anyone for that matter.

If you are referring to media such as programs containing roundtable discussion, etc., then yes, then criticism, etc., would be expected.

The problem today is the "News" business has become the talk show business. They have abdicated their role as purveyors of "news" in favor of extreme partisanship and bias.

That is a very dangerous thing. When the 4th Estate becomes the tool of a particular ideological/political party, history has recorded dire results.

 

It hasn't become the tool of any ideology or party. It is a tool for profit making. Most major media is owned by giant corporations.




Corporations do not have ideological agendas, they have profit making agendas. They simply sell you a product. People like to have their preconceptions reproduced, so media outlets sell that as a product.

For Fox News, sells a product which reproduces the preconceptions of Republicans/conservatives. MSNBC sells a product that reproduces the preconceptions of Democrats/liberals. CNN sells a product that is aimed at the lowest common denominator and people at airports (I don't know why anyone would watch CNN except that they are at the airport). These are products. The individual journalists may be biased, but there is no organizational bias, except towards profit making. If you believe that Comcast cares one way or the other if Democrats or Republicans win elections, then I should introduce you to a friend of mine who is a Nigerian prince who needs to borrow some money!!

 

I completely agree media is a tool for profit making. No question.

The fact is, they produce a product in hopes it will be consumed. The bulk of the MSM is producing a product that attracts a target audience by feeding them what they want to consume.

Today, dog whistles and click bait is the method to attract consumers. Veracity of content is not a requirement, hence the remarkable quantity of misleading, manipulative, and outright deceitful reporting and programing that has become the norm.

What is true is that the product they are producing is ideologically driven, and favors one side of the political spectrum over the other.

 

I agree with most of this, but the last part isn't "true" at all. Five of the six most watched cable news programs are on Fox News.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...atched-cable-news-programs-in-2017/109097066/

Hannity gets 3.2 million viewers a night, Tucker Carlson 2.8 million, plus another 7.5 million for its next 3 most popular shows.

On top of that Rush Limbaugh gets about 14 million listeners to his radio program. Hannity gets a similar number. In total talk radio is totally dominated by conservative media.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-listened-to_radio_programs

In comparison, the Washington Post has 1.27 million digital subscribers, less than 1/10 of what Hannity gets on the radio.

YahooNews gets the most number of unique visitors per month by quite some margin, and they are as close to ideologically neutral as media gets. To be fair though the New York Times does get more visitors than Fox News does.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/news-websites

The larger point being, there is no media bias. Much of the "old media," meaning newspapers and network news tend to attract liberal leaning journalists, but the truth is not as many people get their news from those sources as they used to. People get their news from all over, including Fox, talk radio, Breitbart, Drudge, etc. There is a wide range of media, from many different ideological backgrounds.

The problem with the media isn't that it is liberal, it is that it is divided along partisan lines. Much of it liberal and much of it conservative. So instead of holding power to account, they say whatever they need to defend their "team."

 

ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, MSNBC, CNN, etc., all are decidedly left. This is not in dispute. According to the latest ratings, their combined audiences are 10x's that of Fox News.

You seem to be identifying only those media sources typically considered to align on the right. In addition, you have identified Breitbart, Drudge, etc..

If the "audience" for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Salon, ThinkProgress,etc., etc., were added to the broadcast media I mentioned before, the power of liberal media would dwarf the reach of what is considered conservative media.

Again, the problem comes down to freedom to create revenue in whatever means is legally acceptable, versus the impact of a massive propaganda machine that is not designed to inform, but to inflame.

 

NOw be a good little puppy and go look up where ninety percent of the political Donations of the over whelming majority of all those media conglomerates go and then tell me they aren't shilling for the Democratic party.

 

[

I see you have bought in to the left wing propaganda on FOX.

"News coverage of Trump is really, really negative. Even on Fox News."
"On “Special Report,” the Fox News program that most closely resembles the evening network news, 25 percent of the reports about Trump were negative, compared with 12 percent positive and the remainder neutral. In other words, even the conservative-leaning Fox News featured twice as much bad press as good press"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...tive-even-on-fox-news/?utm_term=.6ad58212b834

 

You can throw company names around but the news comes to us from humans -- humans with built-in biases. If you doubt that you are naive. I say let the media hold the president accountable and hold congress accountable, but the media should also be held accountable. If they are called out for a fake story, which has happened, that is a good thing for our country.

 

The Alt Right is wrong. The Media's duty is to speak truth to power, to uncover government corruption and deception.

 

The gross (purposeful) error you are making is neglecting to estimate the impact of a compliant, overgrown, corrupt central state on media bottom line. For just one of -many- possible examples, ALL those companies derive more profits in climates of higher taxation and redistribution. An upper middle class family will only buy one set of tickets to the game, the show, the movie, or junk in the store, will purchase less impulsively, will save and invest more. The redistributed income from high taxes, OTOH, purchases lots of junk. "Black Friday" wasn't a thing until the advent of the welfare state:



Our talk show hosts make 50+ million a year and our game show hosts 10-20 because of lots of redistribution that allows greater purchase of advertised wares.

Another benefit corrupt central statist government provides its large corporate cronies is regulatory bloat that stifles competition. Regulations sold as "for the consumer" aren't, they are for big, entrenched cronies who have the economies of scale to suffer them. Business starts, for example, were way down during the entirety of the Obama Administration due to hyperregulation. This is by design, is bad for the country but great for the Dow and S&P, including the big media companies.

Claiming that it's just about viewer bias is astoundingly naïve or worse. Claiming there is no media bias is flat out dishonest, outrageously so, which is why you purposefully omit the circulation and viewership numbers of the big newspapers, magazines and big three television networks from your claims and only focus on conservative news outlets. There is a demonstrated, serious left bias in U.S. media.

 

No. There job is to report the news, not massage it in a way that makes any one side happy. That is the job of pundits.

 

Now be a thoughtful and intelligent person and do so far, so you don't embarrass yourself!!

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000461

Comcast is about split equally between the parties.

Disney leans Democrat.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000128&cycle=2014

So does Time Warner.

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000128&cycle=2014

21st Century Fox leans Republican.

https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00330019

So ultimately we have one that is 2 that lean Democrat, one that leans Republican, and one that is split equally. That is hardly "ninety percent of the political Donations" of those organizations. So you're wrong.

It also doesn't tell that much of a story anyways. The individual campaign contributions given by the employees of a company say absolutely nothing about the agenda of a corporation (which is of course to make money). If Fox News started to have their ratings tank, and management thought moderating their messaging would bring in more viewers, you'd see Hannity on TV next week espousing the value of compromise.

 

There is a simple explanation for that. Trump is a historically terrible president, who seems uninterested and unfit for the job.

 

Dodge, and you know it. The vast amount of media contributions to the left are not donations by the corporation (which would make the bias obvious), but by left biased employees, including those who decide what is reported and how. Runs 90%+ to Democrats, and this alone is de facto evidence enough to create a presumption of U.S. left media bias.

 

Yet Hillary got more that then next ten people on the list combined and most of those on the right are well know never trumpers. Further that is just individual donations maybe a third of the total the real money went in through pacs which I couldn't find a link for. That's comcast.

The list for disney looked at lean understates it significantly again donations to pacs would reveal far more about their political leanings than donations to individual canidate which didn't even show up giving only a break down dem and republican.

 

Your opinion is noted but in your OP you claimed fox was a Trump cheering section and I proved you were wrong

 

This is one of the most idiotic statements I have ever heard. Corporations and the neoliberal consensus rejects that entirely. Welfare has been under attack for 40 years and has been constantly diminishing. If "the liberal media" loves it so much, why is it being taken away?

PS. You have to resort to unsophisticated conspiratorial thinking to justify why corporations would have a bias towards liberals, even though Republicans are objectively better for their bottom lines in the short term.

There is some truth buried in here. If you could open up your mind and remove all the insane right wing conspiracy mongering, you may be able to understand what is really happening in America. It is true that a lot of the regulation that exists in America helps large corporations at the expense of smaller competitors. Large corporations with enormous capital bases, can more easily adhere to regulations, that are burdensome for smaller competitors. That is not a partisan issue, both sides regulate in this way.

There is a media bias. It is towards profit making and the ideology which best allows for that. So there are biases in media in favor of markets, capitalism, America, business, and political obsequiousness. Those biases are real. Liberal bias is a delusional fantasy brought about by an Availability cascade and confirmation bias on the part of the right wing, who take comfort in never having to challenge any of their preconceptions, by dismissing any and all information that challenges their preconceptions as "liberal media lies."

 

There is no "the news." All information is meaningless outside of context. So the media needs to speak truth to power, not report some objective nonexistent news.

PS. Seriously, what is the news? What do you prioritize? Do you cover the news globally? Do you cover politics first, then the economy, then education? That decision itself would represent bias in action. What you are asking for is impossible.

 

If by alt right you mean relative handful of unrepentant Klansmen, Aryan Nations jerks, neonazis and skiheads, you aren't speaking to power but to powerlessness hell most of them can't even vote until they put polling stations in prisons.

Fox buisness on the other hand....

 

No, you did not. That is typical Fake Alt Right Analysis.

And Frodly seems to be very confused about the media.

 

The Alt Right members who together are KKK, white supremacists, racialists, AN, neo-fascists, uber nationalists, nativists, and anti democracy types, do indeed wield a tremendous amount of power in the GOP.

 

Your OP is simplistic to the point of puerility, sorry if you don't like having that pointed out.

Empty twaddle... like the OP.

Tell us another whopper. No idea about where you live, but the number of welfare recipients in the U.S. has risen drastically... as a matter of fact, not opinion.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-disability-food-stamps-welfare-2014-2

https://www.thenewamerican.com/econ...ecord-levels-after-50-years-of-war-on-poverty

1 trillion of annual spending on non SS/medicare aid does not equate to "being taken away."

That MASS media has thrived more and more in a climate of drastically increasing MASS redistribution via welfare states is the very opposite of "conspiratorial thinking." To restate, a single upper middle class family will only buy one copy of the latest Disney DVD... redistribute their income and sell a hundred more. This is self-evident, nothing new, mass media advertisers by and large, aren't selling Harry Winston and Rolls Royce, this is why American newspaper industry has always been overwhelmingly left, they know full well where their bread... and their advertisers' bread is buttered.

Oh, you mistook me for RW? You obviously haven't read my many posts on the gov-edu-union-contractor-grantee-trial lawyer-MSM Complex. That Complex includes both parties and all contracting, defense for example. I work with regulations daily, understand more than most on this forum exactly how they are used in central crony graft schemes by BOTH political parties, so spare me the "insane right wing yaddayadda." Your OP premise isn't "insane conspiracy," OTOH, just vapid and left-biased. Both sides engage in it, but there's -0- equivalence in comparing relative corruption between Democrats and Republicans. The GOP is a penny ante shoplifter, the Democrats are Tony Soprano.

Horseshit. The LW bias in U.S. media is well-documented, anyone interested in learning facts about it should read the excellent... centrist not foamy RW... insider Goldberg and Attkisson books on it, and not bother with naïve or purposeful tripe peddled by LW bias apologists.

https://www.amazon.com/Bias-Insider...296092&sr=8-1&keywords=bernard+goldberg+bias\

https://www.amazon.com/Stonewalled-...296152&sr=8-2&keywords=sharyl+attkisson+books

https://www.amazon.com/Smear-Shady-...296152&sr=8-1&keywords=sharyl+attkisson+books

 

I don't have time to respond to all of this, as it is very late where I live, and I need to go to sleep. However, I will leave you with this.




The share of after tax income that the bottom 50% has is 11.27% of all income. This is after taxes as well, so your inevitable appeals to redistribution aren't particularly compelling. If there is some conspiracy to give the bottom 50% more money so they can buy more DVDs, it is the most ineffectual conspiracy in the history of humanity.

First of all, Bernard Goldberg is not a centrist source. Second of all, how many times do I have to repeat the same undeniable fact? There is journalistic bias in the media. Liberals are more drawn to journalism than conservatives, in the same way conservatives are more drawn to work for oil companies. The key distinction is between the bias of individual journalists and institutional bias. Real left-wing media would write stories about corporate abuse, do investigative journalism about corporate cover-ups, and challenge the status quo. The media we have does none of that. They have mostly liberal (not left-wing at all) journalists, working for apolitical institutions that regulate their journalistic behavior so that they don't challenge the profit making potential of their parent company.

 

There is much conservative bias in the medai. Um hmmm, yes, it is so.