Thursday, June 29, 2017

The media, Trump tweets and other stories




Tags: Russia and Obama, CNN and the media, Trump tweets,  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

The media have themselves to blame


fake20news

Yes, it’s true that President Trump is a bit unusual. He tweets. He probably talks too much about “fake news” and counterpunches way beyond proportion.   Trump is Trump and that’s all you can say.    
On the other hand, the media has only itself to blame for its current state of near-collapse, for a couple of reasons:
1) The Obama years may go down as the worst displays of journalism in U.S. history. From “you can keep your own doctor” to “I learned about Fast & Furious from the front page” to “a video caused Benghazi”, most in the media were simply too eager to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt.
For example, did you ever hear a reporter say something like this:    
“Mr. President, did you dismiss somebody when you learned on the front pages that your administration had put 2,000 high-powered rifles in the hands of Mexican cartels… are you not aware that innocent Mexicans have been killed by these weapons… aren’t you terribly served by your senior staff?”
This wasn’t asked about “Fast & Furious” or anything else. It was either a lack of curiosity or something else. It was not the kind of journalism that Americans deserved, especially after what President George W. Bush was put through for eight years of this and that. 
2) Enter President Trump. Since he upset Mrs. Clinton, and all of the experts at the networks, many in the media have been on a rampage to discredit him.    
It is the exact opposite of the Obama years. Again, Mr. Obama was always given the benefit of the doubt. Mr. Trump is second guessed about everything.
So how is all of this working for the country or for the media? Well, it’s not working, as Michael Goodwin wrote:    
Russia, Russia, Russia is a fixation for all the networks, with a new study by the Media Research Center showing 55 percent of Trump coverage on nightly broadcasts was related to the Russia investigation.
That adds up to 353 minutes of airtime since May 17, compared to 47 minutes on Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate pact, 29 minutes on the fight against terrorism and 17 minutes on the efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare, according to the Daily Caller’s summary of the study. It said tax reform got a mere 47 seconds of coverage.
Too much coverage is far from the only problem with Russia reporting. Writing for The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald shows how reckless CNN, the Washington Post and others have been, and makes two key points.
First, that mistakes are “always in the direction of exaggerating the threat and/or inventing incriminating links between” Russia and Trump. Second, that all the false stories “involved evidence-free assertions from anonymous sources that these media outlets uncritically treated as fact.”
He’s right, and I would add another dimension: For all the focus on Russia, the media totally missed a key point. To wit, the Obama administration did nothing about Vladimir Putin’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election even though the White House knew about it for months.
Of course, most media organizations spent eight years cheerleading everything Obama did, and it’s no secret that members of his administration, along with career Democrats, are the anonymous sources feeding the anti-Trump narrative.
Mr. Goodwin is right on. In fact, you don’t have to be a “Trumpista” to see that President Trump is getting a raw deal in contrast to the “butt kissing” that went on with President Obama.
Let’s hope that the media have learned their lesson, especially in light of the latest dismissals of three CNN reporters who got it wrong.
We need an aggressive media. Unfortunately, we don’t have that now.   
Let’s hope that the pendulum can swing back to the middle so that we can trust the media again. We don’t right now, as the latest Gallup Poll tells us!
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk), (YouTube) and follow me on Twitter.
 

Tags: The media vs Trump  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

What they use to say about President. Lincoln!






Do you know what they used to say about President Lincoln?   It was not pretty.    

Let's put it in proper historical context.   There were very strong feelings during the Civil War.   

In other words, it was not easy being president during that terrible conflict that saw citizens fighting their fellow citizens.    There were some very bad moments for President Lincoln, from the constant casualties to the summer of 1864 when few predicted his reelection.

Doug Ross has a neat blog. I just saw this post several years ago: The more things change, the more things stay the same (Civil War Edition)


Frankly, it wasn't pretty. Wonder what Abe's approval ratings were? Very low, I assume!







A post from 2008: The media is in the tank for Obama!




Wonder what journalism professors are saying about the media and Obama? Wonder how many are showing the SNL intro to their students?

Last week, ABC News actually asked Obama a question about his past. What happened?

The left wing blogs went nuts. That's to be expected! Obama is the left's man!

The media jumped on ABC News. I did not expect that. I thought that the media would stand by Charlie Gibson for actually asking Obama a question.

Let's change the story.

Would the media object if a reporter had asked McCain about his racist minister or his association with someone who bombed abortion clinics? Would they regard such activities as irrelevant to McCain's character?

Of course not.

The media would be 24/7 covering everyone of the minister's sermons and writing story after story about the man who bombed abortion clinics.

Of course, some media people are not in the tank for Obama.

This week, Politico had this story: Obama's secret weapon: The media By & :
"The difference seems clear: Many journalists are not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon."
Today, John Fund, another honest journalist, wrote The Media's Man (Journalists flay ABC for failing to coddle Obama):
"Bravo to ABC for finally asking a lot of questions many Americans have been talking about."
Yes, bravo to ABC.

In the short run, all of this media bias is hurting Clinton because Obama has been given a free pass on so many things.

In the long run, Obama, and specially the media, will lose a lot.

Most Americans already think that the media has a liberal bias. (Americans See Liberal Media Bias on TV News)

It won't help the media's credibility to jump in the tank for Obama.

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