MEMO TO JOURNALISTS AND MAIN STREAM MEDIA
Update: February 22, 2021
If you watched Chuck Todd on MSNBC, you may have noticed that Steve Scalise who has zero credibility and has shown his true colors too many times was welcomed to voice his opinion. WHY? When Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, the media gurus kept telling her and her supporters to MOVE ON. Why does the media keep giving the far right Trump wackos a platform?
I don't need to write a new blog post on this because it is the same ole, same ole garbage being regurgitated. Below is a headline from the end of December 2020.
"Beltway media fears the loss of Trump gravy train..."
The answer, my friend is in the lyrics from Cabaret's Money:
"Money makes the world go around
The world go around
The world go around"
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Update: December 30, 2020
BREAKING NEWS: TRUMP LOST! (sarcasm alert)
It is long past time to stop normalizing this man and his administration. There is nothing normal about him. Anyone who truly cares about our country will stop making him something he is not. He is a fundamentally damaged human being. Not being a psychiatrist, I will leave it at that. For four years, the media has striven to downplay the words and actions of this DEPLORABLE man and his enablers. We are in this crisis because of the media giving him a platform that he in no way deserved. Democracy is in jeopardy! One of the first elements that will go if we lose our Democracy will be the free press. Voice of America has already been taken over by Trump's favorite right wingers...
The Trump media hype brought in lots of money. Can we now move on so we can regain our status in the world and stop being a hideous sensationalizing reality show? The Trump gravy train needs to end!
"Beltway media fears the loss of Trump gravy train: A response from the resistance"
https://www.reclaimthefight.com/
Update: June 17, 2020
The New York Times had a headline last week that included the word "misleading" referring to something Trump had said. They still are not able to use the word LIE when Trump lies. This is a man who lies when the truth would serve him better (as my Grandmother would say). Why do they still after 4 years condescend to their readers by using cowardly headlines? They have kept a record of the thousands of falsehoods, truth skewing and misleading statements so call it what it is -- LYING. So after all their misleading articles about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, they are still irresponsible in their treatment of Trump. They have learned nothing since the election. The great and powerful New York Times, once a journalistic giant has fallen, just like our country has fallen due to their journalistic malpractice.
Don't get me wrong. I do not believe the media is the enemy of the people, but when they use their platform to help destroy a very qualified, amazing female candidate while looking past the horrible reputation of an incompetent old white man, the responsibility for where we are today is on the media's shoulders. Hillary supporters are still waiting for an apology... No worries. I will be working very hard to get Biden elected as well as other Dems running for senate all over the country, but it is still painful looking back at 2016. #StillWithHer
MSM has a huge responsibility to the people and they let, we, the people of the United States, down before, during and after the 2016 election.
CNN was my choice for the "news" during the 2016 campaign. Day after day, I heard panels with crazy conservatives like Jeffrey Lord, Scottie Nell Hughes and Kayleigh McEnany loudly defend Trump with outrageous and irrational proclamations. They were allowed to make false claims and seldom were their statements fact checked or called into question in real time. Commentators and moderators covered every stupid, and inane comment Trump made, but possibly five minutes was allotted to a Hillary campaign rally where she was speaking about her economic plan should she be elected. But we were beaten over the head with:
- BUT, BUT, BUT HER EMAILS...
- Hillary's comment "Half of Trump supporters are a 'basket of deplorables.' You would have thought she had created an earthquake when the media heard it and the aftershock tremors went on and on and on. Major faux pas everyone said as the panels discussed and discussed this until not one but two horses were beaten to death. And she was RIGHT! It has been approximately 658 days since the election and Hillary has been right about everything that she warned us would happen if Trump was elected.
- Then MSM speculated about Hillary's health and her lack of transparency regarding her fainting and diagnosis of pneumonia while they showed Trump ranting and raving that Hillary didn't have the stamina to be president. Wasn't his doctor's report of his health hysterical?!
- Don't forget the false equivalency of the Clinton Foundation versus the Trump Foundation that the media focused on. Trump's Foundation was a fraud and is now being fully investigated. Where were all the investigative journalists during the campaign?
"News Coverage of the General Elections: How the Press Failed the Voters."
"A new report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzes news coverage during the 2016 general election, and concludes that both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump received coverage that was overwhelmingly negative in tone and extremely light on policy.
Negative news has partisan consequences. Given that journalists bash both sides, it might be thought the impact would be neutral. It’s not. For one thing, indiscriminate criticism has the effect of blurring important distinctions. Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump? It’s a question that journalists made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign. They reported all the ugly stuff they could find, and left it to the voters to decide what to make of it. Large numbers of voters concluded that the candidates’ indiscretions were equally disqualifying and made their choice, not on the candidates’ fitness for office, but on less tangible criteria—in some cases out of a belief that wildly unrealistic promises could actually be kept.
False equivalencies abound in today’s reporting. When journalists can’t, or won’t, distinguish between allegations directed at the Trump Foundation and those directed at the Clinton Foundation, there’s something seriously amiss. And false equivalencies are developing on a grand scale as a result of relentlessly negative news. If everything and everyone is portrayed negatively, there’s a leveling effect that opens the door to charlatans. The press historically has helped citizens recognize the difference between the earnest politician and the pretender. Today’s news coverage blurs the distinction."
This Shorenstein Center study is based on an analysis of news reports by ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The study’s data were provided by Media Tenor, a firm that specializes in the content analysis of news coverage. The research was partially funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
To read the entire article: https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/
Need more proof. Check this article out from Columbia Journalism Review, December 5, 2017, "Don’t blame the election on fake news. Blame it on the media." https://www.cjr.org/analysis/fake-news-media-election-trump.php
Here is an opinion piece: "Hillary Clinton was right about the MSM's help to Trump" | Dick Polman
Updated ; Posted https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2017/09/hillary_clinton_was_right_abou.html I especially like the last words of this article:
I have no problem with that." Take that Phil Mudd, George Axelrod, Chris Cillizza, Joe and Mika, Chris Matthews and yes, Chris, Hillary had an economic plan and had you done your job, you would have checked out her website which had it laid out in great detail!
"Donald Trump didn't care about policy at all. He seemed proud of his ignorance and didn't even pretend to come up with plans for how he'd build his wall, fix health care, bring back all the lost jobs in manufacturing and coal mining, and defeat ISIS. It was like he'd just wave a magic wand. He ridiculed me for taking the job seriously. "She's got people that sit in cubicles writing policy all day," he told Time magazine. "It's just a waste of paper." I kept waiting for reporters and voters to challenge him on his empty, deceitful promises."
- Hillary Rodham Clinton
What Happened, pg. 232
From Hillary Rodham Clinton's book, What Happened, pg. 393
"Other candidates who have lost the presidency have been allowed -- even encouraged -- to discuss what went wrong and why. After John Kerry lost the election 2004, he quite reasonably said that the release of a tape from Osama bin Laden a day before the election had a significant effect on the outcome of the race. The press was interested in what he had to say. They want me to stop talking.
If it's all my fault, then the media doesn't need to do any soul searching. Republicans can say Putin's meddling had no consequences. Democrats don't need to question their own assumptions and prescriptions. Everyone can just move on."
I keep thinking I have given enough examples of the media and the debacle of their coverage of Hillary Clinton and then I find something else that proves my point. What was and still is mind boggling to me is the misunderstanding or myth that Hillary lost because she did not talk (or not enough) about jobs and the economy. Months after the election Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews kept asking guests if Hillary had a plan. Really? I know I have addressed this before, but it just makes me crazy. He is a huge sexist along with being a bombastic blowhard who loves the sound of his own voice.
"The Dangerous Myth That Hillary Clinton Ignored the Working Class" from The Atlantic, December 5, 2016 by Derek Thompson
Excerpts from the article:
"But here is the troubling reality for civically minded liberals looking to justify their preferred strategies: Hillary Clinton talked about the working class, middle-class jobs, and the dignity of work constantly. And she still lost.
...She said the word “job” more in the Democratic National Convention speech than Trump did in the RNC acceptance speech; she mentioned the word “jobs” more during the first presidential debate than Trump did. She offered the most comprehensively progressive economic platform of any presidential candidate in history—one specifically tailored to an economy powered by an educated workforce."
If the 2016 election had come down to economics exclusively, the working class—which, by any reasonable definition, includes the black, Hispanic, and Asian working classes, too—would have elected Hillary Clinton president."
I look forward to the day when MSM will own up to their responsibility and complicity in helping Trump win and apologizing for their bias against Hillary Clinton. Not holding my breath. I am grateful to Jeffrey Toobin for his admittance of the role he played.
Here is the link to read the entire article: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/12/hillary-clinton-working-class/509477/
From the Washington Post, January 29, 2018 by Eric Wemple
CNN's Jeffrey Toobin: 'I regret my role' in Hillary Clinton false equivalence
"No question about the attack on Clinton, responded Toobin, citing “all that bogus stuff about the Clinton Foundation” — perhaps a reference to the Uranium One story or even to the pre-election reporting of Bret Baier — later withdrawn — that there would be an indictment relating to the foundation.
And I hold myself somewhat responsible for that,” continued Toobin, a steady presence on CNN since 2002. “I think there was a lot of false equivalence in the 2016 campaign. That every time we said something, pointed out something about Donald Trump — whether it was his business interests, or grab ’em by the p–––y, we felt like, ‘Oh, we gotta, like, talk about — we gotta say something bad about Hillary.’ And I think it led to a sense of false equivalence that was misleading, and I regret my role in doing that.”
To read the full article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/01/29/cnns-jeffrey-toobin-i-regret-my-role-in-hillary-clinton-false-equivalence/?utm_term=.074c97fb2601
A few more quotes from the article:
“Were the allegations surrounding Clinton of the same order of magnitude as those surrounding Trump?” asks Patterson. “It’s a question that political reporters made no serious effort to answer during the 2016 campaign.
Criticism dogged Hillary Clinton at every step of the general election. Her “bad press” outpaced her “good press” by 64 percent to 36 percent. She was criticized for everything from her speaking style to her use of emails."
If I had an enemies list for MSM, here are a few of those who would be on it:
CNN management, programmers, Jeff Zucker, Jake Tapper, Chris Cillizza, Maggie Haberman, Phil Mudd, George Axelrod, Ryan Lizza, New York Times, Washington Post, Ruth Marcus, Josh Barro, Maureen Dowd, MSNBC, Mika and Joe from Morning Joe, Chris Hayes, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, Chuck Todd, etc., etc.
My list, of course, does not take into account the fake news and the many almost completely conservative newspapers and the propaganda machine of Fox News. The ones I have listed and ones I may have missed are ones that should have been our gate keepers, but instead SOLD OUT for ratings or to sell newspapers!
Which brings me to something I studied in junior high school. We don't hear this term these days, but I think we can safely say it was resurrected for the 2016 presidential campaign.
Yellow Journalism
the practice of seeking out sensational news for the purpose of boosting a newspaper’s circulation, or, if such stories are hard to find, of trying to make comparatively innocuous news appear sensational. Also called sensationalism. — yellow journalist, n.
As a reminder of the First Amendment: - Amendment 1*
The irony of Trump's war against the press/media is that they are complicit in helping him to win the 2016 election. And it is because of MSM's bias against Hillary Clinton that I cannot forgive them. The First Amendment protects them, but with that they also have a huge responsibility to provide facts and truth, not slanted, biased articles. The snarky and mean spirited opinions should be left to conversations over martinis, not in the New York Times (Maureen Dowd and Maggie Haberman).
There is a long list of why and how we got to this vile moment in the history of our country. I urge people to read Hillary Clinton's book What Happened and Susan Bordo's book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton. There are many, many articles and studies written about the failure of the press during the election. Google is great for researching.
And one more thing. Did the press and MSM ever fully vet Bernie Sanders? I have been a Hillary supporter for decades so I really didn't know that much about him, but he seemed to be getting a huge pass from cable news and the newspapers. It wasn't until after the election that I started realizing how much of his life including his time in the senate did not get discussed and dissected like Hillary's did. Have to leave that discussion for another day.
Remember, it wasn't just the Russians that helped Trump!
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