Posted on 10/29/2015 11:48:28 AM PDT by shortstop
The lingering question from last nightâs Republican presidential debate is not for the candidates or their party, it is for the press.
And that question is: Is that you?
The conduct of CNBC and its panel of inquisitors â is that you? Is that what has become of American journalism?
Because those werenât reporters, they were insolent idiots. Self-important crusaders engaged in a condescending and partisan attack on people they have dehumanized through their evident disgust.
If that is the role to which American journalism has devolved, if the conduct and questions of the CNBC panelists seem reasonable to the press, then what lingering relevance can that press have and what legitimate usefulness to the American people can it claim?
It wasnât a debate between candidates, it was a debate between the panelists and the candidates. And not so much a debate as an attack, an intense and focused attempt to do as much damage to the public perceptions of the candidates as the fleeting prominence of CNBC would allow.
There was a palpable contempt on the part of the panelists for the people who stood before them. An air of superiority and condescension that is almost never encountered in polite society.
And the news media has to decide if that contempt for Republican candidates and the some 40 percent of the American population which agrees with them is representative of it. Does the news media today understand antagonism as objectivism?
Is there enough self-awareness at CNBC and in the American news media to look at that debate broadcast and recognize that it was defined and derailed by supposed reporters with a malignant self-importance?
In the last Republican debate, CNNâs Anderson Cooper â no friend of conservatism â asked hard, critical questions with courtesy and professionalism and without mockery or contempt. He did journalism, the CNBC clowns did vandalism. And yet this morningâs stories, all across the country, describe the actions of last night as if the candidates attacked the press as some sort of cliché scapegoating.
The press has made itself, instead of the antagonists, the victims.
Worse, the press has made its reports on last nightâs debate unrecognizable to those who actually watched the debate.
Itâs not just that the CNBC cohort and its brothers in the media made the story about themselves, itâs that they seem to have worked hard to make sure that the real story didnât get out. They were not challenging, they were obscuring.
And what is the story?
That a number of Republicans are contesting for their partyâs presidential nomination. To that end, those Republicans are presenting themselves and their views for public consideration. One would think that the role of the news media would be to facilitate that, particularly in a debate where the candidates can speak directly for themselves to the viewing audience.
Instead, CNBC put on a freak show. It began with an imbecilic pre-debate panel that had no place in anything pretending to be network television. Honestly, these were folks whose audition tapes would normally end up in the trash beside a small-market news directorâs desk.
Then the panelists. One minor correspondent from a real network and two others who â based on ratings â have never been heard of by 99.4 percent of the American population.
And they acted like fools.
Insulting, self-important, chuckling fools.
Speaking to governors and senators like they were mental defectives.
And by transference mocking and belittling the millions of Americans who, lacking the enlightenment of the press, might happen to agree with one or more of the candidates.
It is not just the candidates who were hated.
It is the Americans who support them.
Does the press realize that?
Does the news media understand that it, by its own actions and insinuations, is attacking a large portion of the American people? Does that serve either the cause of truth or commerce?
Did CNBC, having a temporary audience likely to be some 30 to 50 times larger than its average week, stop to think that embarrassing itself in front of that audience was a bad idea? When you invite guests to your home, do you mock them?
And does the press get it?
Does anyone in American journalism see where CNBC and its hacks went wrong?
Or is the tribalism of last nightâs Tweets and this morningâs reports truly the face and voice of whatâs left of the news media? Were candidate criticisms really pandering and is conservative reaction really ignorance?
Is there no possibility that some of the news media has so absorbed the progressive agenda and priorities that it has abandoned objectivity and embraced advocacy? Is it not possible that reporters have become propagandists? Is there no room for looking at last nightâs debate and asking if perchance CNBC and its people went too far?
Today isnât about where America stands, itâs about where the media stands.
And thus the question.
A question asked of the reporters, not by the reporters. Last night, looking at the conduct of those panelists â Is that you?
Is that who you are and what your profession has become?
OhMiGosh, is the press liberally biased?
We’re stuned!
“During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been levelled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.” âThomas Jefferson, 1805
My beeber was aware of this 2 decades ago.
I watched the World Series last night instead of the debate, but based on the number of threads it must have been horrible.
I have no questions about the press. They almost uniformly hate American and anyone who loves America.
IMHO ... lets look at where this debate thrashing began ... FOX News ... via Megan “Im Hot” Kelly ... and her side kick Bret Bare .... They set the stage for all other networks to follow ....
Thank you Fox, Kelly and Bare ......
If that is the role to which American journalism has devolved,
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If? There’s no “if” about it and it’s not a recent phenomenon either.
Megan âIm Hotâ Kelly
I agree that she is hot. But that’s about as far as it goes.
The press debate “moderators” kept asking insulting, rude, and misleading “questions”, and when Cruz called them on it, they were very upset about it.
Just Wow!
-—in ‘78 Solzhenitsyn gave a commencement speech to Harvard telling them all (and the world)-—that the MSM in “free” (ha ha) America was exactly like Pravda, and we were constantly being fed LIES and LIES and more LIES and a dog and pony show. (in schools especially).
Do you realize how many decades ago that simple truth went ignored by everyone????????? As if Solzhenitsyn wasn’t a genius and didn’t understand agitprop and the vile system of socialism? LOL.
AND WE STILL ALLOW OUR CHILDREN TO BE FED LIES and SATANIC ETHICS TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where is the OUTRAGE and the ELIMINATION of this indoctrination system going on as I type—— which was LONG BEFORE GOALS 2000?????
Why isn’t that blasted EVERY DAY by Rush since Solzhenitsyn stated the Truth-— to get the Feds OUT of indoctrinating and destroying the Minds (Reason) in our children and calling out the press????????
It is taking WAY too long to get the Truth out there and God is STILL banned from the public square and schools and we live under a Nation founded only on the Christian ideas of Virtue (Justice System) where our unalienable Natural Rights come ONLY from God-—not satan and the sodomites..
DEBATE RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT THE PRESS?..........REALLY?................
Most have been aware of this for decades. That said, it was a moment to stand up and cheer when Cruz took on the moderators last night and cut them with the precision of a scalpel and by extension the MSM. Go Cruz. Huzzah
Thank you Fox, Kelly and Bare ....
There’s a reason they’re called the enemedia, folks.
And, as of last night, "The Woodshed News Network".
They were just leftists being leftists. No news here. Bob needs to go to chat.
well...no...the debate ANSWERED “questions about the press”.
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