Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America

Came here to say this. There is some excellent, probing journalism out there. The problem is, it's not very profitable

It is far more monolithic than people realize. Folks think that only the Fox News if the world were being overly generous to Trump when he was just a candidate. The reality is that all mass market news outlets were.

I was a loooong time listener of NPR, a news outlets that most would probably consider as neutral or even left of center as you'll get from US mass media. And I totally lost respect for them hearing them cover Trump as a candidate. Even now, I can just about hear Steve Inskeep chuckling after a Trump speech and simply never taking him as a serious candidate. This was someone who was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes. And these fucken reporters, who I had previously held in high regard, were just laughing at some of the insane antics that Donald was pulling. They were letting this shit slide while they would have roasted any other candidate if they had said the same thing.

And it's not just NPR but any mass media news outlets acted the same way. That's where the majority of Americans get their news and they were all doing the same things.

It isn't, I totally agree, but there are far fewer independently owned news outlets and far fewer owners than ever. And that is part of the reason we are here.

But, yeah, this is one of a few journalists reporting on what is actually happening with regard to Republican authoritarianism.

If you can control who gets a job based on their background, (example: "no socialists, gays, or jews. off the record policy") you dont even need to use invasive mind control techniques. Just have your writing teams sniff their own farts.

People like murdock control huge swaths of news outlets. The corprate office issues propaganda scripts that individuals are forced to put their name on (example, by reading it aloud).

Yup. Republicans had been building a case against Hillary for some 2 decades. So much so, in fact, that even seasoned Democrats were falling for those attacks against her were ingrained into our pop culture.

Such a shame because she would have made a perfect president. She was a pitbull that was willing to call Republicans on their shit.

It was Hillary Clinton that elevated trump as a pied piper, the media discovered an advertising and viewer gold mine. Had her hubris not gotten involved he may have never become president

Stenographers?

I remember Colbert's session at the WH Correspondents Dinner and how the "liberal media" kept saying no one found it funny, it bombed, etc...not realizing that it was indeed funny to those not in the room. But making the "liberal media" the butt of the joke in some hard and hilarious truth-telling was more than they could bear, apparently, even if Colbert is part of the same media empire...

As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished.

Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

Co-conspirators. Is that better?

Not a chance did they ever report on him in the seriousness that they should have. He was running for the highest office in the land. He would have access to our nuclear codes and the amount of investigative reportering they did was on par to someone running for city counsel.

He was on trial for sexual assault, and they gave that the same seriousness as the BS accusation against Biden who was wrongly accused to being touchy-feely. Somehow when you are the Republican candidate, multiple rape accusations are somehow the same as false touching accusations. And that's just the free-passes they gave him on his sexual assault problems, let alone countless other things they could have dug into.

The media absolutely has lots a ton of legitimacy over the years and them giving him one free pass after another only made it worse.

During 2016 election The New York Times published thousands of stories about Clinton email/Benghazi, not one on Trumps lifelong ties to NY/Russian mob. As if The New York Times wasn't in a particularly knowledgeable position to report on 70 years of NYC construction & mob history

Um, no, they played the bothsiderist game during his run, all through his presidency, and even now. They keep pretending as if he's a normal candidate and a normal president and his rabid base are just normal voters.

Hell you tell someone "Bro you're a dumbass" these days

You're the one getting the door for being "toxic"

That's... actually a good point. I consider myself being pretty against Cancel Culture despite being pretty far to the left.

Too often people get canceled based on gossip or false rumors, like somehow "He's 30, she's 24" gets morphed into "Dude's a full blown pedo" or... "This forum post from 9001 years ago uses a form of slang that is offensive now, but was acceptable at the time, clearly he's a white supremacist" becomes "This guy eats babies in the glorious name of Satan, and by Satan I mean Trump!"

It's just something I hope the internet grows beyond. Society and general.

"Look Nazis are bad, but if you do anything about it, even if it's to protect yourself or some one else! Then you're the bad guy!"

I really hope you're just naive and not a concern troll.

Sure. But it's not like they announce the election results before the election. Not everyone's votes count, and there's a lot of bullshit, but the results are still fundamentally influenced by the voting. That's "flawed democracy" vs. "pretend democracy".

The difference is that occasionally you can get upsets like the Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones election. Even with all the knobs and levers twisted to give Moore every advantage possible, the allegations that Moore had been having sex with numerous underage girls was enough to derail his run. In a properly functioning system it shouldn't have even been close. But, in the end, it was very close.

I don't think we have to get even as far as the technically-legal but obviously shady as fuck outcomes like this, but just look at the last presidential election. Our votes only mattered because they didn't manage to get away with ignoring them, and that's largely just because a couple of people found the barest of morals and they were rampantly incompetent.

It's still critically important. What's happening in Russia shows that. Sure, the most watched shows in Russia are state-backed programs that blast out Putin's propaganda. But, that doesn't mean he was going to allow other news sources to exist.

nah turfs are now openly allying with Nazis, so we can safely rule hem out of the whole "being left" thing

Corporations have done a fantastic job keeping 50% of the population dumber than a bag of bricks and voting against their own interest.

A lot of people vote against their own interests, but I don't think you can really blame the corporations for that.

Voting against their interests tends to be culture war nonsense, and corporations don't really want to get involved in that because they never want to take sides, because that could cost them customers. See the recent Bud Lite nonsense for example.

Instead, what they tend to do is use their money to seed out candidates who hold views they don't like (basically ensuring that the DNC and RNC only run candidates that the companies approve of) or doing things after elections to get loopholes and carve-outs in laws that benefit them. When you effectively have both the democrats and republicans on your payroll, you don't really care which side people vote for, you just ensure that whoever's elected is beholden to you.

As for keeping people dumb, again, not something most corporations work for. Some of them, like tech companies, even want an intelligent workforce. The more people in their hiring pool, the less they have to pay. Having said that, they're happy if the government cuts funding to schools if it means tax breaks that benefit them.

But yeah, I think fundamentally you're right. The only team that can beat the fascists includes a lot of corporate democrats. And with corporate democrats in the "big tent", there are lots of reforms that are never going to be on the table. And, when people see corporate-owned politicians in power and refusing to even consider common-sense reforms, they get frustrated. Some stop voting entirely. Others give up and vote for the fascists because they hope that will at least disrupt the system.

Bringing it back to journalism, it seems to me like what we need is good journalism that exposes both the stranglehold the corporations have on a lot of politicians, and how much bribery and influence peddling there is, but also how the other side is outright fascist and what the consequences might be. Instead we get horse race journalism, and talking points, and both-sides he-said-she-said bullshit.

All things considered, I think our institutions are holding up pretty well. The coup attempt failed and the election was certified. Trump tried to coerce Georgia into falsifying the election results and failed. Trump stole classified documents and the agencies responsible for that escalated appropriately to the point where he got raided by the FBI. The DOJ is prosecuting all these accordingly. It took longer than I would like but overall it's going pretty well.

We have enormous issues to address but it's hard to attend to domestic policy if our democracy is effectively destroyed with the inauguration of a tyrant who stole an election. That's pretty much game over..

What exactly do you mean by "aristocracy"? You could argue that that's what the US already is. Lobbying by the very rich means they get their way much more often than the majority of the population gets their way. Even many of the senators and congress people are deci or centi-millionaires.

I'd say the Trump voters want a fascist state with some hints of democracy remaining. They want rich people (other than Trump) to have less of a voice than they currently do, and they're willing to give up many democratic aspects of the current system to get it. I think most of them would still like to be able to vote for things, and would still want their votes to matter. But, I think they'd be willing to give up many of their rights as long as the strong man in charge hurts the right people.

Brutal fascism may be Trump's end goal, but that doesn't mean he has any likelihood of getting it. What matters more is what everyone else wants. Dictators don't become dictators on their own. They need generals, lawyers, judges, cops, etc. to all work with them to achieve their aims. There are certainly some people in Trump's orbit who would welcome a Trump dictatorship, but there are others who want him as a figurehead that allows them to become oligarchs. There are others who actually do believe in some form of democracy, they just want a democracy that looked a lot like the 1776 democracy, where only the opinion of white land-owning white males mattered.

As for the 2024 election, even if Trump wins, things will only get slightly less free and slightly less fair. They're already badly bent, and they'll get bent some more, but it's not like elections are going to go from "free" to "non-free" over 4 years. There's just too much institutional momentum and not enough popular support for Trump for that to happen.

Well considering that the biggest news channels on youtube are legacy media channel even just the broadcast version would help, but yes it would need to be expanded

I agree with half your comment, because Sinclair is a threat to democracy. But the change in our political culture began with right wing talk radio after the end of the fairness doctrine.

Of course there were other factors, like neoliberal attacks on our living standards. But perhaps there could have been another narrative to explain those neoliberal attacks in a more diverse media environment.

Now imagine every business was ran this way. No overproduction. No expanding markets. Only producing what is needed. But there’s the rub. Who decides what is needed? Our whole cultural paradigm must change for this to be possible, and we don’t have generations to work out the kinks. It truly is the tragedy of the commons.

Lol at the idea that China is the opposite of capitalism... 😂🤦‍♀️

Then China will collapse too. You have to get out of binary thinking. Us versus them. Any society based on growth will fail. Produce resources for survivability. That is all. Our way of doing things is gone. It can’t continue. Adapt or die.

Where did he talk about China?

Yup. Newt did everything possible to sow division and hatred. Even instructing others on how to go about it.

And then he had the audacity to claim Obama was "divisive", blah blah blah.

I agree Fox News is a special kind of programming consisting of many whole cloth fabrications aimed at less critical thinkers, but don't kid yourself about CNN, MSNBC etc, they blatantly lie and propagandize too, it's just less overt.

Also, not Newt Gangrene -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newt

Not to mention the current American political climate was started in the mid 90's by Newt Gingrich. He created the philosophy of "party before country," along with the launch of 24/7 news networks, which is largely responsible for the mess you see today. ⁸ It's going to take the same amount of time that started this mess to reverse it.

PS: Let's not forget about the "my way, or the highway" generation, Boomers. Once most of them are out of office we'll start to see the trend reverse.

You act like all companies are evil and all individuals and co-ops are somehow pure of heart

Right, there are fundamentally different motivations and attract different types of people. Roger Ailes for instance would not be attracted to a journalist coop.

What would be the motivation for individual journalists to spread disinfo? Sure some will, but a few people spreading disinfo is or even many uncoordinated people spewing BS is very different from a massive corporation with specific goals and the means to coordinate and spread misinfo to achieve those goals.

Honestly, I couldn’t disagree more.

I think doing this is what’s got us into this pickle to begin with, where everything is so ultra partisan

Reporting on tweets IS factual reporting.

It's just out of context. It needs to be properly analyzed and editorialized (to show how utterly inconsequential it is, or stop the story from running entirely because of its lack of newsworthiness -- both of which are judgement calls beyond that mere facts).

You're conflating two totally different things. Inconsequential, low-value reporting is a natural consequence of the way society has devalued journalism over our lifetime. Both literally and figuratively. News outlets simply cannot afford the kind of beat and investigative journalism they used to be able to do, but they still have to put out articles to keep eyeballs on them or else they will only lose more funding. It has nothing more to do with media bias than any other kind of reporting (that is to say, all reporting contains biases).

One way it devalues it is by simply drying up funding, making intensive investigative journalism basically impossible for any professional.

Another way is by spreading this vast narrative of the biased media that cannot be trusted on anything (which feeds into the funding drought).

The cure is journalistic transparency and individual media literacy, not for journalists to pretend they're beep boop robots that have no normal human opinions on anything.

It's always been bad, but some decades ago, newspapers and TV brought on actual experts for analyses, whereas these days, everyone can step on a soapbox -- as a result, you get people who have no clue what they're talking about spouting nonsense left and right.

Of course you want people to do educate themselves on their own on matters they find important, but it developed into a direction where watching Fox and reading some tweets from your echo chamber gives you enough confirmation to make you feel like you did do proper research.

This is giving me so much comfort, thank you.

The FCC repealed the Fairness Doctrine under him. Which is what I am going off of but yes you are correct. Corpos have always been pieces of shit trying to manipulate the population for their own profit.

You're right, it's a response to the part I quoted and responded to, which is why I quoted it and responded to it.
At least I actually contributed something to the discussion as oppose to your pointless comment.. ¯(ツ)/¯

Grow up!

You're just proving my point. Thanks.

EDIT: Seriously...what about anything you just wrote do you think will sway me to your side of any issues? The tone is hostile, the sentiment is fucked up, and you clearly didn't read a word I said.

That...that comment right there is why people are so radicalized. It's going to be a brutal few years for America.

Maybe 50-100? Dunno...they'd have one once a month at my local gay bar. I hung out there all the time for 5-6 years or so.

None of them were kid appropriate. None.

I edited my comment...I put the wrong name there. You're right, Trayvon was a tragic death too.

He had a gun and ran. That's always death by cop.

Thanks.

I had this discussion with a big group over Labor Day. And the resulting replies were exactly what I was expecting. Everyone latches on to their fringe issue and goes as hardcore as they can on it.

You show up with some nuance in a discussion, and you are the enemy. Period.

The Internet is not a real place. Swing voters are real though, and they're disgusted with this shit.

(To clarify, I'll likely never vote R, but I'm likely going 3rd party so I've still got a soul)

Lol...you can cut off the man bun and step away from the keyboard. It's nice outside.