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America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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DWill

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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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ant wrote: Actually the very point I'm making is essentially echoed in your comments. We both agree the NY TIMES is biased. It does not matter if their bias slant appears in the Opinion columns. The slant exists, with no real offer of balance.
It does matter rather a lot that a slant appears on the opinion pages instead of the news sections. Newspapers and journals will show their editorial philosophies as well as political leanings on the opinion pages. I don't begrudge any publication for going more in one direction than the other. The National Review is conservative, so is Commentary, which is fine. As for the NYT, David Brooks and Ross Douhat are staff columnists. There is a concern with balance.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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Of course there's a concern with balance mainly because there is no balance.
The journalism of today is 10% reporting/90% OPED and political brainwashing . The NYT article I shared above is actually a POLITICAL commentary, if you can believe it. Its tone is brazenly affectionate towards Hillary. It's some sort of weird attempt at evoking awe at her journey toward a very good and noble political destiny. Bull. She's a crook and a liar.

Let's take a moment and recall the level of mistrust and outright animosity the Obama Administration had towards the media:
What all of the breathless articles are missing is that the Obama administration did more damage to press freedoms than any other administration in history. The press seems to have forgotten that under Obama, the FBI and Justice Department monitored reporters' phone records, labeled James Rosen of Fox News an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal leak case, and prosecuted nine cases involving whistleblowers and leaks to the press – compared with only three previous criminal cases involving leaks to journalists in all of American history
https://www.google.com/amp/www.usnews.c ... ontext=amp

Here's the current left wing unprincipled logic:

Trump calls the media bad names and fake news..Therefore, Trump is a tyrant.

Obama taps reporter's phone calls, demonizes certain journalists by labeling them co-conspirators, and prosecutes whistleblowers. Therefore, he's the 9th greatest president in history.

As I said before, this isn't your normal hypocrisy from the left. It's a total meltdown of principles and ethics.
It's a shameful moment in our history.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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ant wrote:Of course there's a concern with balance mainly because there is no balance.
That was supposed to mean that the NYT shows a concern for balance, by having at least 2 conservative-leaning columnists.
Trump calls the media bad names and fake news..Therefore, Trump is a tyrant.
Trump just told us, "The fake news media is the enemy of the country." That is totally appalling. As hard as you might try to spin it, there is no equivalence between Obama, Clinton, or anyone else, and Trump.
Last edited by DWill on Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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A war of words (because that's all it's been, to date) is worse than this??!!
the FBI and Justice Department monitored reporters' phone records, labeled James Rosen of Fox News an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal leak case, and prosecuted nine cases involving whistleblowers and leaks to the press – compared with only three previous criminal cases involving leaks to journalists in all of American history
Ummm, okay.. :|
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DWill

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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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Ant, he is the President of the United States, not a flame-throwing candidate any longer, and in only a month he has already tried to undermine faith in at least two of our bedrock institutions: the free press and free and fair elections. His words matter a lot.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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The online magazine "Wired" wrote an article abou a report by The Committee To Protect Journalists regarding Obama’s promises of transparency and his war with the press which they called the worst since Nixon:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired. ... a-war/amp/

Full report here,

https://www.cpj.org/reports/2013/10/oba ... st-911.php
The administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate,” Downie said.
When Obama first entered office the left regularly reminded everyone of how bad the former administration was. Now, it seems reminding everyone of Obama's behavior, in this case with the press, is something to be ignored. Or, as DWill described, is just "spin"

The Left protects the legacy of its icons with the most brazen dishonesty and brutish double standards imaginable.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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DWill wrote:Ant, he is the President of the United States, not a flame-throwing candidate any longer, and in only a month he has already tried to undermine faith in at least two of our bedrock institutions: the free press and free and fair elections. His words matter a lot.
No one here is seeking to excuse his inability to control himself.

Obama did much more than throw flames at the press.
There has been lots of speculation and little concrete evidence offered to citizens that provides proof Trump and Russia fixed or influenced the election. There was evidence brought forth that the media (CNN) and Clinton attempted to steer the election in her favor when the two colluded with each other during the first debate.

So far your specific accusations are overblown and without sufficient evidence .

I definitely have serious concerns with the political climate. What I refuse to do is ride this crazed paranoia wave the left has created strictly to undermine the current administration.

The election is over. Clinton lost. Deal with it. Like I am.
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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ant wrote:Geo,
It does not matter if their bias slant appears in the Opinion columns. The slant exists, with no real offer of balance.
Actually, it matters very much. For five decades (probably longer) the Wall Street Journal has managed to be both ridiculously biased on their editorial page and scrupulously fair in their reporting. Many of the best exposés of business practices and individual corporation malfeasance were uncovered by the WSJ.

I tend to agree that most reporters and editors share a liberal outlook on the world. Of course, they also tend to be better educated, and in the supposed Trump re-alignment, that almost ensures they will seem liberal. I could wish they would do a better job of providing a range of perspectives rather than drilling down only on the issues they think matter. When I was a journalist it was a commonplace observation that most reporters fell asleep over writing a budget story, and their understanding of economics tends to be similarly bad.

But when the public takes the editorial page as an indication that the news pages can't be trusted, they make a critical error. It is as foolish as confusing published lies, which are fake news, with "perspectives I disagree with" which are legitimate even if uncomfortable. I never stopped reading the WSJ, even though I knew their opinion page to be mostly drivel.

The Tea Party Right is currently engaged in a smear campaign to tar the legitimate press with the brush of irresponsible distortion which we get regularly from talk radio, the alt-right and even, at times, Fox News. The legitimate press handles the truth responsibly (even if, like Mother Jones or even Rachel Maddow, they are highly biased about which aspects they give space to), and they will apologize for printing something untrue. The new, mostly right-wing, alternative press does not take integrity seriously and are completely untrustworthy. They do not care how credibility works, because they know they are appealing to an audience that cares more about having its prejudices reinforced than about truth.

Complain all you want about lack of objectivity, but don't introduce distortions like "it doesn't matter if it is on the editorial page or in the news."
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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ant wrote: No one here is seeking to excuse his inability to control himself.

Obama did much more than throw flames at the press.
Did Obama try to make his followers believe that the press was persecuting him? No, he didn't. When the ACA rollout disaster was all over the news, for example, Obama didn't attack the messengers for reporting it.
There has been lots of speculation and little concrete evidence offered to citizens that provides proof Trump and Russia fixed or influenced the election. There was evidence brought forth that the media (CNN) and Clinton attempted to steer the election in her favor when the two colluded with each other during the first debate.
Every news story I have read or listened to has stated that the flurry of contacts between the Trump people and Russians around the time of Flynn's call to Kislyak, is not evidence of further involvement by Trump's people. But news of the contacts themselves should not be kept under wraps just because we don't know yet if they have any real significance. Likewise with Trump and Russia fixing the election. The news outlets I use have never said Trump asked Russia for help. There was Trump's very foolish public plea to Russia to find Hillary's 30,000 deleted emails. That was treated with some seriousness because it should be, but the responsible media didn't say it was proof that Trump had collaborated with Putin.

The Donna Brazile CNN episode was bad, agreed. If there has been no collaboration between Russia and the Trump campaign to give Trump an edge, and if Trump had not dismissed the evidence the intelligence agencies have of Russian hacking, attacking the intelligence community instead, the Brazile thing could be said to be worse. But at least one of those conditions doesn't apply, so the Russian problem has become major. If it should be found that Trump and the Russians were in cahoots, then the CNN deal becomes very minor by comparison.
So far your specific accusations are overblown and without sufficient evidence .
Which specific accusations would those be?
I definitely have serious concerns with the political climate. What I refuse to do is ride this crazed paranoia wave the left has created strictly to undermine the current administration.
Take note of some serious dissent within Trump's own party, such as McCain's scathing speech in Munich. If you do hold Trump responsible for his lack of control, you would not be implying that he has played no part in his own troubles, and would not be saying the left has whipped up problems that aren't there. Trump has provided easy pickings for anyone.
The election is over. Clinton lost. Deal with it. Like I am.
Is that tongue in cheek? Aren't you the one dredging up Obama and Clinton?
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Re: America's distrust of the news media (gallup poll).

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ant wrote:Let's take a moment and recall the level of mistrust and outright animosity the Obama Administration had towards the media:
What all of the breathless articles are missing is that the Obama administration did more damage to press freedoms than any other administration in history. The press seems to have forgotten that under Obama, the FBI and Justice Department monitored reporters' phone records, labeled James Rosen of Fox News an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a criminal leak case, and prosecuted nine cases involving whistleblowers and leaks to the press – compared with only three previous criminal cases involving leaks to journalists in all of American history
A recent analysis in The Economist concluded that the numerical difference was due to the recent developments in electronic communication which make it more possible than it used to be to trace a trail of phone communications. I don't really know, but it makes sense to me.
ant wrote:Trump calls the media bad names and fake news..Therefore, Trump is a tyrant.
Obama taps reporter's phone calls, demonizes certain journalists by labeling them co-conspirators, and prosecutes whistleblowers.
Therefore, he's the 9th greatest president in history.
To me the crucial difference is that Obama exercised judgement about what enforcement is important. Whatever your opinion about Wikileaks and Chelsea Manning, for example, you have to admit that they leaked information more damaging to American security than just embarassment of those in power.

Do you know of any Obama prosecutions of whistle-blowers for simply leaking information awkward to his political position? Or are they based on actual security concerns?

Trump's loose cannon approach has directly implied that there was nothing wrong with Flynn's discussion of sanctions (there was, although in my view the lie was much worse than the legal violation) or the series of contacts with Russian intelligence (we don't know, do we?) but only with the leaks about them. That is so self-serving as to single-handedly destroy credibility. And of course Congress is ignoring this claim.

The notion that Obama waged war on the press is laughable. And you want us to consider his security-related prosecutions to be equivalent to claiming CNN is "fake news", the tip of an iceberg of lies and efforts to discredit the press for exposing his lies? No, sorry, the big lie may take in some people, but I am not one of them.
ant wrote:"As I said before, this isn't your normal hypocrisy from the left. It's a total meltdown of principles and ethics.
It's a shameful moment in our history."
The only thing melting down is your sense of proportion. If you want claims of lack of objectivity to be taken seriously, you must start by showing some. You realize that some of the most pointed criticisms of Obama's prosecutions have come from the "biased" left, don't you?
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