Posted on 09/20/2016 8:22:55 AM PDT by mandaladon
The liberal media are freaking out over the possibility that Donald Trump might win the presidency.
They are denouncing their profession, decrying what they see as a press corps that coddles Trump and castigates Hillary Clinton, and demanding a change before it is too late.
Let’s take a deep breath and see if they have a credible case, or whether this is pure partisanship.
It’s been just 18 days since Politico reported that Hillary Clinton’s advisers were telling her to prepare for a possible landslide in the Electoral College. Now, with Trump pulling roughly even in national polls and ahead or within striking distance in most battleground states, a Trump administration is no longer some distant mirage.
Some folks on the left are so convinced that Trump would be a disaster, and so mystified why roughly half the country doesn’t view him with the same disdain, that they are lashing out at the media.
I would pose this question: Why do these pundits think they’re so much smarter than everyone else that they can clearly see Trump’s flaws but others are blinded by lousy media coverage?
I’d also pose this question: Can anyone seriously say there hasn’t been an avalanche of negative coverage about Trump and the birther issue, Trump and the Khan family, Trump and the comments about “Second Amendment people” taking care of Clinton, Trump and the Mexican-American judge, and on and on?
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The MSM conundrum: Ratings vs. Principles
“So does Fox News not look in a mirror?”
Exactly.
Ha, if she has another "stumble" at next week's debate, maybe in another 18 days they'll be telling her the same thing but with a much different look on their faces.
We’ve known for quite some time that Krugman is provably insane.
What? WHAT?
How delusional are these people? Leftism truly is a mental disorder.
Actually, I recall Kurtz being much more of a lefty before coming to FNC.
The media is doing poorly with democratic politicians, what do they have to lose by supporting Trump?
The MSM needs to dig up more dirt on Trump—I mean, he must have stepped on an insect in his youth, or eaten dinner before washing his hands! ;-)
I pressed him last week on the lack of any public record for his contention that he opposed the Iraq invasion.
What public record does Kurtz, who knows better, expect a private citizen to register his or her opinions in for subsequent verification a decade and a half later? Free Republic? Of course there is disparate treatment here; at the time Hillary had spent eight years in active involvement in national policy as - her phrase - "co-President". Trump had been constructing buildings. Kurtz is free to check the cornerstones for incriminating carvings but beyond that, what does expect to find and where does he expect to find it?
The real difficulty in the attitude that the media are obligated to judge one candidate a monster worthy of asymmetrical treatment is that they are also obligated to recognize it and make a case for it, which such fools as E. J. Dionne have signally failed to do. "Of course Trump's a monster, everybody says so" is an admission of groupthink, not of journalism. And complaining about his income tax returns when his opponent's IRS is running an audit on them is a sign of pure hypocrisy, not of investigative reporting.
There is, too, the simple contradiction between the viewpoints "we've really been biased against Hillary" and "sure, we've been biased against Trump but we should be." You can't have it both ways. And when we see the outrage of CNN editing inflammatory words into Trump's speech text that were never there, it's fairly clear that no level playing field was intended and that no accountability of the tilt is going to be made. In short, the media are taking heat for being biased because they are biased, for lying because they lie, for misrepresentation because they misrepresent. It isn't simply a matter of infinitely malleable partisan perception.
So easy to understand. To liberals, their views, their beliefs are what is. They don’t or shouldn’t have to defend or tolerate that which is not.
Hillary is what is and Donald isn’t. There should be NO reality other than that. Thus, to a lib even ONE story that doesn’t crush Trump is seen as an outrage. ONE story that portrays Hillary as anything other than what is,
is a break in reality that is of astronomical proportions. Oh the bias!!
I bet they will find out that Trump played with toy soldiers instead of girlie dolls as a kid. If that ever comes out, he’s FINISHED!
ROFLMAO! These people live in alternative universe.
To put it differently with all the advantages given her by her lapdog media, Hillary should have put this race away.
Why not? But don’t expect liberals to address it.
“...decrying what they see as a press corps that coddles Trump and castigates Hillary Clinton...”
This is defined as “Of every 100 things said about Trump, one is good. Of every 100 things said about Clinton, one is bad”
It sure seems that there is group think in the New York/Washington axis of our media overlords.
I would love to know what they have told Lester Holt to do.
It strikes me as odd how hard the liberals came down on Matt Lauer. Rather than address how poorly Hillary performed in that forum, rather than discuss the shortcomings of their candidate, the liberals decided that Matt Lauer didn’t work hard enough to bring down Trump.
Can I ask a stupid question?
How is it the job of the media to take sides in political campaigns??? Aren’t they supposed to report and let us decide????
I think God is watching over Mr. Trump.
It is actually very unclear what the job of the media is today.
I think most of us would prefer they stick to reporting facts and present opinions in separate opinion pieces.
I think most of us would prefer that “journalists” state their biases upfront rather than trying to pretend to be objective.
But, if the media chooses the road of deception and bias hiding behind claims of objectivity then they shouldn’t complain if viewers tune them out, refuse to support their advertisers, and blast away at them at forums like this one.
I remember seeing Ben Bradlee (Washington Post editor) interviewed on CSPAN years ago—Ben said the job of journalists was to support the underdog (I think he used the word “afflicted”) and to attack those who victimize them.
That sounds like a somewhat reasonable view until you ask a couple of simple questions: Who gave reporters the right to determine who was afflicted and who was victimizing who?
What happens when they get it wrong because they didn’t investigate all the facts? What happens if their sources are lying to them? What happens when they want access to sources and can’t publish the truth for fear of losing that access?
I would argue that at this point in our history the average American is the afflicted and the mass media are abusing us.
Who will cover that story?
(That is _our_ job, here, and we are the real journalists today.)
Does anyone in the media have the slightest clue that it is because of overt and blatant bias like this that they keep losing credibility?
They are supposed to report—nothing more. It is not their job to try to impose a certain style of thinking on us.
Damn voters just won’t do what they’re told.
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