I wish the major media outlets would stop perseverating on fake news, alternative facts, lying, and so on, not because it harms Trump but because it doesn’t. What it actually does is undermine their own position. It’s like sawing off the branch you’re sitting on.
They don’t seem to recognize that a cottage industry has grown up around identifying fake news, alternative facts, and lying on the part of the major news outlets. It’s not difficult. It’s like shooting a sitting duck.
Where did the idea of a factual, non-partisan press come from, anyway? For the first 100 years or so of Columbia’s existence it was assumed that the press was partisan. It never stopped being partisan. But it also responds to market pressures and a half century ago both parties were more centrist than they are now.
What can be done about the situation? Either the major media outlets should just openly accept their status as partisan journals or they should take steps to stop being partisan journals. Here are a few suggestions.
Stop endorsing candidates or policies. You can endorse principles without being partisan but not candidates, laws, or policies.
Report more stories on more subjects. As I’ve mentioned before there are multiple ways of grooming the news including what you report, how you report it, and what you don’t report. If you get all of your news from American news media, you might be hardly aware that Africa, South America or, indeed, much of Europe even existed. When I want to know about Africa, I must turn to French media.
Change their style books. Use factual characterizations rather than Orwellian circumlocutions. “Illegal immigrant”, if hurtful, is factually correct. “Undocumented immigrant” is an Orwellian half-truth. “Climate denialist” is loaded. It should either be eschewed or balanced by referring to the opposing view as “climate alarmists” or “warmists”. Better not to characterize at all. Just report the facts in a balanced fashion and let the reader and/or viewer draw his or her own conclusions.
Decide that criticizing non-white or female politicians isn’t ipso facto racist or sexist. If you disagree with a position or action taken by a white, male politician, you should disapprove of it when taken or held by a black or female one. Doing otherwise is either partisan or bigoted or both. News coverage during President Obama’s presidency felt like the end of The Red Shoes.
Abandon the point-of-view style of news writing and return to the five Ws style.
Given the proliferation of sources that has led to the decline in influence of the major media outlets, that may be too little too late. But at least it’s a step in the right direction.
““Climate denialist†is loaded.”
What would you prefer when the overwhelming majority of climate scientists think global warming is real?
Does the 5 Ws really work so well now? What you do not mention here is the fact of blatant lying by politicians now, especially in the case of Trump, tough he is not alone. On of our problems now is that the press often just dutifully reports both sides of the story as though they are equal. The round earthers say the sun always rises in the East because of our spin, but the flat earthers say it is because of God’s will, or something.
I think any attempt by the press to try to show that one side has lied, or that one side has a much weaker claim has been and will be parlayed into a claim about bias and/or fake news. While you are concerned about the press, and yes there is reason of concern, should we also not be concerned about the massive and very real effort to make sure that the press is never believed unless it behaves only as a stenographer for the taking down and spreading of the official talking points?
Steve
I’m with Steve. Dave, you’d have been right just about any other time, but that time is past.
How about “those who disagree”? Or “the opposing view”?
If the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted?
If the members of the press wish to be treated as professionals and anything other than, as Steve put it, “stenographers” for a single party, they should start acting like it. Better late than never.
They are acting like Americans, Dave, like Americans who care about this country and care about free speech. With greatest respect, I don’t think you have a grasp on what’s happening right now. You are witnessing a massive tissue rejection. The body is not accepting its new bladder.
When the POTUS lies about almost literally everything, and his followers take it all like Jonestown Kool-Aid, this ‘one the one hand,’ bullshit does nothing but help this regime. He has put a white supremacist thug on the NSC in place of the DNI and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. That thug has issued a Holocaust Day statement that excludes all reference to Jews. The world is in danger. The United States has already been badly damaged. We are condemned by our friends and praised by the likes of the Butcher of Aleppo and Bibi Netanyahu.
The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast, as Mr. Dylan sings. The fight is on for the Constitution. If you can’t lend a hand. . .
““the opposing viewâ€?
When the opposing view has about as much scientific support as the flat earth people? Should we do that with the anti-vaccine people? I mean, that is what we actually do with the anti-vaxxers and the result is a lot more dead and sick people. Why can’t we just point out that the “other side” is probably wrong? Just because this is an issue in the US because we have weird politics doesnt mean we have to play up to that.
Steve
How do we go about testing your claim?
https://twitter.com/williamjordann/status/825781634330980352
It has taken Trump 8 days to reach majority disapproval. The previous record holder? Bill Clinton with 573 days. Obama took 936.
This is unprecedented. He started at 46% and he’s dropped. There are massive protests all over the country. Cities are vowing to resist. States are vowing to resist. The media are locating their spines.
Uber, which sent its drivers in to break the JFK taxi strike has been watching the country shift to Lyft, which condemned the ban and donated a million dollars to the ACLU. And 12 hours ago, around midnight. Uber suddenly decided they, too, would condemn the ban. They join New Balance and many others who in distancing themselves from Trump.
The polls, the demonstrations, the reaction of business rushing to support the resistance. That’s a fair body of suggestive evidence. Add to that the fact that even some (few) principled Republicans are rejecting it.
Never has the American public been nearly this negative on a new president. He is being rejected. The transplant is not taking.
Trump’s approval rating is higher than it was on election day and lower than it was the day after his inauguration. IMO it will go up and down.
Based on the RCP average of polls his approval rating is about 44% now. It will need to go down another 15 or so points for him to be in real trouble.
What I meant was going forward, how do we tell that the body politic, to use your phrase, is “rejecting him”?
“What would you prefer when the overwhelming majority of climate scientists think global warming is real?”
It would be nice if people – and the press – looked at the actual science instead of reporting a horse race about what scientists say or supposedly believe. The fact is the “climate change” is a catch-all short-hand for an incredibly complex topic that, if you read the actual science, is described in terms of probabilities and great uncertainty in all but a few areas. I always suggest that people read the latest IPCC summary for policymakers, which is the official scientific consensus of the science community.
Unfortunately the press doesn’t report on that. They report the political angle as bipolar contest between the believers and deniers when the reality is neither. If we had an effective media with some introspection and an interest besides the political horse-race, they could actually educate the public on an important policy topic.
That is the kind of thing the press should be doing IMO, not keeping score and endless fact-checking. I agree the five “W’s” is the best model.
“How do we go about testing your claim?”
I don’t think we have anyone transplanting bladders, but we have lots of markers for rejection of other organs. When those markers turn positive (or negative as the case may be) we agree that rejection is occurring. We don’t argue about whether or not the makers are false because they were funded by a group we don’t like.
Steve
LOL
Be reasonable…….see it my way.
I think when you are less than 2 weeks into any new presidency, vociferous rejection, as described in some posts, is hysterically motivated by knee jerk, partisan enthusiasts. After all, many of the bleachers for the inauguration ceremonies haven’t even been taken down.
Also, how I read some of suggestions, improving on disingenuous type of news reporting, is simply cut to chase in using less PC language.