American journalism is collapsing before our eyes
American journalism is collapsing before our eyes
By Michael Goodwin, New York Post, August 21 2016
Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign , and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it.
The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations.
The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America.
The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent.
Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that Trump does. The mad mullahs of Iran, who call America the Great Satan and vow to wipe Israel off the map, are treated gently by comparison.
By torching its remaining credibility in service of Clinton, the mainstream media’s reputations will likely never recover, nor will the standards. No future producer, editor, reporter or anchor can be expected to meet a test of fairness when that standard has been trashed in such willful and blatant fashion.
Liberal bias in journalism is often baked into the cake. The traditional ethos of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable leads to demands that government solve every problem. Favoring big government, then, becomes routine among most journalists, especially young ones.
I know because I was one of them. I started at the Times while the Vietnam War and civil-rights movement raged, and was full of certainty about right and wrong.
My editors were, too, though in a different way. Our boss of bosses, the legendary Abe Rosenthal, knew his reporters leaned left, so he leaned right to “keep the paper straight.”
That meant the Times, except for the opinion pages, was scrubbed free of reporters’ political views, an edict that was enforced by giving the opinion and news operations separate editors. The church-and-state structure was one reason the Times was considered the flagship of journalism.
Those days are gone. The Times now is so out of the closet as a Clinton shill that it is giving itself permission to violate any semblance of evenhandedness in its news pages as well as its opinion pages.
A recent article by its media reporter, Jim Rutenberg, whom I know and like, began this way: “If you’re a working journalist and you believe that Donald J. Trump is a demagogue playing to the nation’s worst racist and nationalistic tendencies, that he cozies up to anti-American dictators and that he would be dangerous with control of the United States nuclear codes, how the heck are you supposed to cover him?”
Whoa, Nellie. The clear assumption is that many reporters see Trump that way, and it is noteworthy that no similar question is raised about Clinton, whose scandals are deserving only of “scrutiny.” Rutenberg approvingly cites a leftist journalist who calls one candidate “normal” and the other “abnormal.”
Clinton is hardly “normal” to the 68 percent of Americans who find her dishonest and untrustworthy, though apparently not a single one of those people writes for the Times. Statistically, that makes the Times “abnormal.”
Also, you don’t need to be a detective to hear echoes in that first paragraph of Clinton speeches and ads, including those featured prominently on the Times’ Web site. In effect, the paper has seamlessly adopted Clinton’s view as its own, then tries to justify its coverage.
It’s an impossible task, and Rutenberg fails because he must. Any reporter who agrees with Clinton about Trump has no business covering either candidate.
It’s pure bias, which the Times fancies itself an expert in detecting in others, but is blissfully tolerant of its own. And with the top political editor quoted in the story as approving the one-sided coverage as necessary and deserving, the prejudice is now official policy.
It’s a historic mistake and a complete break with the paper’s own traditions. Instead of dropping its standards, the Times should bend over backwards to enforce them, even while acknowledging that Trump is a rare breed. That’s the whole point of standards — they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.
The Times, of course, is not alone in becoming unhinged over Trump, but that’s also the point. It used to be unique because of its adherence to fairness.
Now its only standard is a double standard, one that it proudly confesses. Shame would be more appropriate.
Click this link to read the rest of this article:
http://nypost.com/2016/08/21/american-journalism-is-collapsing-before-our-eyes/
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I wish to make it clear that I am NOT a Trump supporter. My only purpose in posting this article is to register my disgust with the news media.
When I was, for 2 years, the editor of my university's newspaper (for both years winner of the award for being the best weekly university newspaper in Canada) we considered The Christian Science Monitor to be our model, not only for its format, but because it was a prize-winning newspaper due to its lack of bias. That has changed, however, as it now leans left, perhaps not quite as far left as most of the rest of the media.
It is virtually impossible to find any media these days that is not unabashedly biased, sometimes to extremes. It just makes me sick.
" So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
Those who have attempted , actively or passively, to "normalize" Donald trump's presidential campaign should be ashamed of themselves. For almost a year much of the mainstream media "normalized" Donald Trump. This is a man who is EASILY the biggest liar we have EVER seen run for the presidency. He is completely ignorant of the basics of government and domestic and foreign policy. He is a boor who relates everything that happens to himself. He is a known conman and fraud. What the media did wrong is not that they are objecting to him now, but that they did not object to him for almost a year, giving him an estimated 2 BILLION dollars worth of free publicity for his presidential campaign.
Since this is an article I posted I would appreciate if you would describe in text the YouTube you posted.
It just shows liberal sheep being brainwashed by Hillary's super pac commercials. The people that make their voting choice based on 30 second television commercials.
So it has nothing to do with bias in journalism, which is the point of the article I posted.
Buzz, Donald Trump is horrendously unqualified to be president of the United States, He is the most unqualified candidate in history. He is not normal in any sense related to the presidency. The media is under no requirement to treat this farce of a candidate the same way they treat legitimate people. If they would have done their jobs over the past 14 months instead of for just the last few weeks the Republicans might have had a decent candidate to present to the American people.
What are your qualifications for making this statement - "is horrendously unqualified to be president of the United States, He is the most unqualified candidate in history. He is not normal in any sense related to the presidency."
As the question was asked - who died and made you God?
lol.
It is a consensus opinion. Do you ever read a newspaper? There are hundreds of prominent REPUBLICANS who have rejected Trump's candidacy.
There is an old saying "you can lead the horse to water but you can't make him drink". That describes those who blind themselves to Trump's unprecedented lack of qualifications.
If the shoe fits.....
So, John, using your logic, if 68% of people don't trust Hillary.......
Donald Trump is seen on television by four people at different locations, a disabled man in a wheelchair, a woman getting ready to go to work , a plumber working on a sink in someones kitchen, and an older veteran.
In his tv words Trump is seen insulting the disabled, working women, people who are not rich, and John Mccain.
Buzz,
This is a political ad. It is Trump talking about his opinions now and in the past
Reporter on TV: Trump is facing new criticism when he appears to mocked a reporter with a disability.
Trump: (waving his arms around spastically on a TV) You've got to see this guy...errr...I don't remember....errrrrr.. I don't remember....
Footage of average Americans going about their day....
Young Trump: Putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing. I don't want to sound too much like a chauvinist.
Trump: You have to be wealthy, in order to be great. I'm sorry to say it.
Trump: He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who were not captured (talking about McCain).
Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this advertising
On screen: Donald Trump: Unfit to be president.
NWM,
There are plenty of news outlets that are just as bent to keep Hillary out, too. The issue here is that there is no one newspaper that I can point to that doesn't have a bias. You don't get just the news. You get what they want you to get AND you get it with their spin.
Absolute 100% agreement girl.
The MSM, ALL flavors of it are just propaganda machines belonging to both fascist parties.
There is no truth in media anymore......
"I'de buy that for a dollar"....
Is more real than anyone can imagine....
And Fox is the propaganda arm for Trump.
I'll stick with the National Enquirer for solid un bias news.
I watched last week why journalism is at an all time low. It is because they can no longer afford investigative reporting, because the internet rechurns news and gives it to us for free. That only the uber rich can afford to own a new paper and they tend to direct the editorial direction, so what you get is their POV's meshed in with actual news.
Don't feel bad Buzz. A little known fact is that Jefferson influenced the newspaper of his time by planting a lie about Adams, that could not counter due to how slow the news moved back in the day. This is a time honored tradition. The term "yellow journalism" was first coined in the late 1800's about biased news reporting. From wiki:
The term was coined in the mid-1890s to characterize the sensational journalism that used some yellow ink in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer 's New York World and William Randolph Hearst 's New York Journal . The battle peaked from 1895 to about 1898, and historical usage often refers specifically to this period. Both papers were accused by critics of sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation, although the newspapers did serious reporting as well. An English magazine in 1898 noted, "All American journalism is not ‘yellow’, though all strictly ‘up-to-date’ yellow journalism is American!" [5]
There are those who are enmeshed , perhaps with all good intentions, in the "both sides do it" theme that is so beloved by a segment of the electorate, and the media too for that matter.
This theme offers up the opinion that whatever one side does in politics, the other side has done something equally bad or disqualifying or embarrassing.
As a simple way to keep peace in discussions maybe this theme has some usefulness. As the election for the next president draws near, it's usefulness shrinks.
Donald Trump is on another level, a far worse level, of corruption, lying, incivility, erratic behavior, incompetence, ignorance, bigotry and bald narcissism compared to Hillary Clinton. This distressing truth is acknowledged even by the dozens of prominent Republicans who have endorsed Clinton over their own parties nominee. It does not help our great country to pretend this is not so.
________________________________________________________________________________________
"So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
John,
You are missing the point of this article. It is about journalism, not Trump. Journalism has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time. And yes, both sides do it.
I don't think I am missing the point, so we disagree. The New York Post article is criticizing the media for being harsh on Donald Trump.
We have never had a candidate as unqualified and disqualified as Trump, certainly not since the advent of "national" media. It would be a tremendous disservice to the nation if the media were to continue to "normalize" this man and pretend that it would in any be rational to elect this demagogue president of the United States. If the late Andy Kaufmann ran for president and managed to get a lot of people behind him, would he deserve to be treated as a serious candidate ? Of course not.
Donald Trump is a fraud and conman. He has participated in multiple multi-level marketing schemes which were at the least unethical if not illegal.
There is no requirement for anyone in the media to treat him as if he is qualified for any high office.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
"So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
John never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. (Where have I heard that before?)
Buzz, the seeded article is not about the media in general, it is about how the media treats Trump.
__________________________________________________________________________________
"So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
It's an example of media bias.
You call it bias. Other people call it recognizing that a national disaster is in the making and telling the truth about it.
_______________________________________________________________________________
"So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
For those who are incapable of figuring it out. The topic of this article is bias in journalism. It is not a billboard for your political choice of candidate, or a blackboard to write your negativity over and over 500 times. I'm not your teacher.
Buzz, you are free to interpret the article anyway you like. No one is stopping you.
But here is the point of the article, as it appears as a summary, at the bottom
The Times, of course, is not alone in becoming unhinged over Trump, but that’s also the point. It used to be unique because of its adherence to fairness.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
"So if all of his horrifying disqualifications are as stated -- and they are -- why has there been no media crusade to deny him the presidency? The press jumps to warn America about missing children, tainted meat and approaching dustings of snow? Why are we not on high fucking alert?"
Bob Garfield, Media Post
You are overly sensitive, John, to the extent of it being a mental sickness, in your devotion and shilling for Hillary and demonizing of Trump. The media's treatment of Trump in the article is an EXAMPLE of media bias, which is the topic. If anything, using Trump as an example will at the very least provide a modicum of BALANCE to the massively unbalanced support that Hillary gets from the mainstream media.
Buzz, you are out of touch with what is going on in America, and evidently not able to discuss the menace of Trump with the seriousness the subject requires. This is no joke.
The issue of media bias is universal, John. You don't have to be an American to be aware of it, to understand it, and to criticize it. Unfortunately, people like you are what I would call two-dimensional. You are incapable of facing facts, and as you have proven to me countless time, resisting them, probably even incapable of being aware of them. You always criticize sources, but you blind yourself to any truths that may be expressed therein, intentionally or otherwise.
You have lowered yourself to the lowest common denominator of shill in these pages.
For whatever reason, you lack a serious perspective on the American election. For many months you have been complaining that too much attention is paid to the election on this forum. Now you want to discuss the media from the point of view that Donald Trump is not being treated fairly by the media. The media gave Donald Trump an estimated TWO BILLION dollars worth of free advertising in this election season Buzz. He was uncritically interviewed and profiled hundreds of times. What bias was at work against him then?
Donald Trump is SEVENTY years old and has never run for office before. Any office. He is most known to the world for two things. His money and his reality tv shows. He is an off the charts narcissist. He is a known con man. Known. He lent his name to multi level marketing pyramid schemes. He has been sued HUNDREDS of times for refusing to pay people who did work for his casino and hotel businesses. His company was sued twice for housing discrimination, and he had to enter an agreement with the government and pay significant fines to avoid further action against him. He is a pathological liar who lies time after time every day on the campaign trail. And a thousand other things.
And you think he is being picked on? That he is not being treated fairly by newspapers and other reporters.
You don't know what you are talking about Buzz. Any "unfairness" in this election was shown against his Republican primary opponents when the media ignored his many many many disqualifying faults for so long.
You are out of touch over there in China. That may be too bad, but it is not my problem.
Buzz, why are you biased against Hillary Clinton? You say you have no favorite in the election, but you defend Trump. And join in attacks on Clinton.
And where the fuck is all this righteousness when people come on this forum EVERY DAY and lie about this election? I don't see you complaining about any of that.
So, John, please tell us how much in 'Free Advertising' Hillary has gotten since her days as First lady when she failed at the one project she was heading up and since then? The media has been grooming her to be President, until Mr. Obama popped on the scene and was found to be more acceptable as the first African American President than as the First Woman President and has picked up since his re-election shaping her to be the next president.
If you're going to be honest (even with yourself), you know that the media bias is hardly one sided and in the sprit of this article, the media is doing a grave disservice to all of us in shaping the news rather than reporting the news and letting the citizens of the country decide what it means. If you don't see that, you are lying to yourself, along with lying to all the rest of us.
For John's benefit, I am going to repeat the comment I made immediately after posting the article, because he doesn't seem to understand that I don't give a shit about Trump - the issue in the article is bias in journalism. Trump was an example, no more. I am not the only person in the comments here who have failed in pointing out to John, because he must be VERY slow in understanding that the issue here is media bias and it would not have made a difference if the example given were Trump or Hillary or Mickey Mouse (not meaning Randy, of course).
I wish to make it clear that I am NOT a Trump supporter. My only purpose in posting this article is to register my disgust with the news media.
When I was, for 2 years, the editor of my university's newspaper (for both years winner of the award for being the best weekly university newspaper in Canada) we considered The Christian Science Monitor to be our model, not only for its format, but because it was a prize-winning newspaper due to its lack of bias. That has changed, however, as it now leans left, perhaps not quite as far left as most of the rest of the media.
It is virtually impossible to find any media these days that is not unabashedly biased, sometimes to extremes. It just makes me sick.
John can't stop accusing me of everything he can think of. He makes Robespierre look like Pope John XXIII.
Buzz, warning the public about Donald Trump is not bias. He is the most unqualified presidential candidate in the history of this country. It has been OPENLY discussed for months whether or not his own party should try and remove him from the ticket. Has that ever happened before in any election that you know of? That doesn't tell you that there is something seriously wrong with this man?
Should America consider electing a mentally disturbed con man president of the United States so we can say that the coverage was "fair" according to your standards? I don't think so.
Are you writing from a hospital for the mentally insane or you just so fucking dense that you can't understand that I don't support Trump and I don't care if its the devil or the witch who becomes POTUS? The issue of the article, and my comments were concerned only with respect to journalistic and media bias. Can you not get that through your skull?
You say I never support Hillary? Go look at my comment on the Hillary fashion article, which was prior to your accusation.
I'm not the only one who can see that you are dragging your own meaning out of an article that is about media bias. Perrie pointed this out to you as well:
"John,
You are missing the point of this article. It is about journalism, not Trump. Journalism has been a pet peeve of mine for a very long time. And yes, both sides do it."
Going back to sleep. In the meantime try your best to keep on topic - media bias.
I don't know if you can see this or not Buzz, but all it is an super pac add for Hillary. She's not giving press conferences or even campaigning. All she is doing is collecting money at fundraisers because she knows that money buy elections. She learned that very well with the Clinton Foundation how money works. She couldn't hold out long enough to campaign as long as one Trump event.
Yes, Six, I could watch it.
Attack advertising can sometimes come back and bite the person who uses them. The perfect example in Canada was when Jean Chretien was the leader of the Liberal party and just before the election the Conservative party ran an ad that showed Chretien's face when it was disfigured from Bell's Palsy (a virus that paralyses the muscles of the face) with the words "Do you want this man to lead your government?" The Canadian people are very fair, were so outraged by that attack ad, they gave Chretien one of the biggest landslide victories in Canadian history, almost wiping out the Conservative party.
I would say the Conservative party could have been the best or worst choice to win the election, but they definitely didn't make the best choice when airing that advertisement.
I think it is legitimate to use this ad and it is Trump's ignorance that gave them the ammunition. In the beginning he armed the Democrats to the hilt. It's impossible to take back such things as these. Such is the impression a person gives who is ignorant and later becomes informed. His opponent would be foolish not to use these videos against him. He has only himself to blame for arming them so well.
I love this one.
Buzz, you are out of touch with what is going on in America, and evidently not able to discuss the menace of Trump with the seriousness the subject requires. This is no joke.
I know we all have seen people like John before. I consider these people who are undying fans of Trump, Hillary or Obama to be exactly alike.
I'll get to the real subject in a second.
The way I see it is I don't care for any of them, but I have to look at the big picture. What do I think would happen if Trump became president and what do I think would happen if Hillary became president?
I see Trump having to back down, as he has, over the immigration issue somewhat.
I see Hillary as a real power hungry person who will not have to back down and will forge ahead with all the things I don't want to happen to this country.
I remember my Dad, who was a big John F. Kennedy supporter, saying a person who had come from nothing would not help the people, but a person who had come from wealth would. A person of wealth hasn't had to fight their way to the top and could look down on the downtrodden without thinking of themselves first.
Now.
The MSM is bias to the nth degree. There are more avenues today than there were years ago to at least provide some backlash, but the general public is not nearly as aware of them as we are. They get their news from the MSM to affect their view of the world much more than we do here.
I cringe to think what it would be like today had there been no backlash at all. I keep going back to Yuri Bezmenov's statement when he said in order to brainwash a nation they needed two generations without any backlash.
They can report what they want these people to believe and not report what they don't want these people to believe. These people get up and go to work the next day and don't really see anything until they get home.
The young journalist are taught by Liberal professors and come out of school as Liberal journalist, knowing very little history or having to do very little investigative journalism. All they have to do sensationalize the news and follow the MSM to be accepted.
It's the Rebel in the field of journalism who is more likely to be telling you the truth.
Sixpick in the three years or so you have posted to this forum , you have repeatedly posted the most egregiously false articles and videos of ANYONE here. You have promoted debunked conspiracies. You have been a birther. You have accused the president of the United States of being a communist.
You have no freaking standing to lecture anyone about truth.
The SAD fact of this forum is that people like you have been allowed for SO LONG to present nonsense as "investigative reporting" that some people here don't know the difference anymore. I don't think you know the difference anymore between what is true and what is fantasy. Yes, some of the things you post are accurate. No one can be wrong all the time. But you mix the truth with ridiculous conspiracies and false information and you do it all the time. That ends up meaning you have NO credibility.
When people allow lies and fabrications to be seen as equally valid as accurate information for the sake of "getting along", this is what we get on a daily basis, a forum where people become offended because their conspiracy theories are not accepted. It is a sad state of affairs for this "community".
Deleted. D.
Deleted. D.
The topic is the media's coverage of Donald Trump.
Did you read the seeded article? Should I copy and paste from the article to demonstrate that to you?
Exposing Trump's humongous flaws as a potential president is not bias. It is reporting for the benefit of the public.
Why don't you have anything to say about the lying ass seeds about Hillary that have appeared on this site on a daily basis. I don't see you saying jack shit about any of those.
You don't know what the topic is , so stop telling me I am off topic. The topic is whether or not the media is biased against Trump. How is the truth bias?
"Buzz, you are out of touch with what is going on in America, and evidently not able to discuss the menace of Trump with the seriousness the subject requires. This is no joke."
I don't give a shit WHO gets to be POTUS - it's no skin off my teeth. You Americans are faced with having to be satisfied for the next four years with the worst possible choice to have to make - not for which candidate would be respected and capable and competent and honest, but for the one that stinks the least. In my lifetime I've never seen such a choice placed before you. Good luck to you.
Thank you kindly. We will need it, for certain sure. I too have never witnessed such a pathetic and soul (country as well) killing pair of candidates laid before the public in a presidential election. Either way, we are boned. I think, regardless the outcome, we should get ready for civil unrest. It's coming.
Life in the Land of Chocka-Cola is getting downright surreal.
Civil unrest, perhaps, but loss of reputation as the greatest country in the world, more likely.
Buzz - I agree the truth doesn't matter so much anymore BUT with Trump the media doesn't have to make it up. Trump is like a media's wet dream......a complete walking talking cluster frock and it's all true.