Here is an interesting opinion piece. I especially like the conclusion...
Chris Wallace FOX Hard News vs FOX News Opinion
WAPO FOX Undermines Real News
Now I absolutely love watching Chris Wallace on FOX on Sunday mornings. He is smart, demanding, balanced, etc. Of course when I mentioned this opinion to my favorite couple who loves watching the FOX Opinion show hosts... They said that they think Chris is a Liberal... Of course one of them sees Rush Limbaugh as a good "news" source... So that explains a lot... :-)
So with Trump etal dividing the Conservatives, I have to think this is going to be great for the DEMs in 2018.
"Journalists can help themselves by, simply put, being better at our jobs. Giving Trump less ammunition in the form of unforced errors is crucial. The media must prove it is deserving of the trust it desires. Mistakes, which will happen, must be corrected swiftly.Some related links
Instead of willing the news to go in a certain direction, we should wait and see if it actually does. Whataboutism isn't journalism. Neither is "look over here!"
Conservative journalism, in particular, must provide clear-eyed commentary and analysis in the era of Trump. While liberalism is united against a common enemy, conservatives are divided. Some like the President, some like him enough and some like him just because he is not the alternative, Hillary Clinton. With no orienting political direction, the uniting principle among conservatives in media must be truth. "
Chris Wallace FOX Hard News vs FOX News Opinion
WAPO FOX Undermines Real News
Now I absolutely love watching Chris Wallace on FOX on Sunday mornings. He is smart, demanding, balanced, etc. Of course when I mentioned this opinion to my favorite couple who loves watching the FOX Opinion show hosts... They said that they think Chris is a Liberal... Of course one of them sees Rush Limbaugh as a good "news" source... So that explains a lot... :-)
So with Trump etal dividing the Conservatives, I have to think this is going to be great for the DEMs in 2018.
32 comments:
The challenge for journalists is that they have to cover a president whom they do not respect, and who is both incompetent and unfit for the job. To cover this president fairly inevitably presents an appearance of partisanship and bias. This kind of challenge is unprecedented in journalism and isn't the sort of problem that's taught in journalism schools. No president illustrates the challenges of "he said, she said" coverage that so many journalists have come to rely on.
==Hiram
Personally I think that the above really should not be an issue.
News: "newly received or noteworthy information, especially about recent or important events."
The excellent news people like Chris Wallace focus on the news. And they don't confuse it with:
- whether they respect someone or not
- whether that person lied before
- whether they have an opinion about the persons fitness
I think you are confusing News and Journalism.
Journalism: "the activity or profession of writing for newspapers, magazines, or news websites or preparing news to be broadcast."
Apparently journalism is a broader topic that may contain editorials, columns and opinion pieces. Which are often full of personal feelings, thoughts, beliefs, etc that are not news. They are inherently biased since they are the view of one person.
Some examples are Kevin Drum, Sean Hannity, Ezra Klein, Rush Limbaugh, Eric Black, etc.
Certainly the election of someone who is unfit and incompetent to be president qualifies as noteworthy.
I think of it as a political problem. If they guy I support is a clown, how should I go about managing news coverage to present him in the best light? The absolute first thing would be to shift attention away from my guy's weakness. I would argue that it isn't my guys nakedness, the issue is that kid in the front row who rudely talks about it instead of focusing my guy's tax policy. In all sorts of ways, I tell people that my guy isn't the issue, the problem is that their eyes are lying, that the darn messenger is just getting the message wrong. It is surprising to me how often this tactic works.
It's a free country so far. Thankfully the president who think his justice department should prosecute his political adversaries is a contemptible joke. But would this president really benefit if people did take him seriously? Would he even be president? Would he benefit if what he says wasn't dismissed as so many meaningless lies? If instead of focusing on his nakedness, they focused instead on his corruption?
--Hiram
We have a political system that rewards divisiveness.
Say you are a guy whom 36 percent of the country likes and 44 percent of the country hates. What do you do? How do you win? The arithmetical solution in a system that gives the victory to pluralities, you divide the opposition. The unpopular candidate has to find ways to split the opposition, to turn that 44 into two 22's. Our founders, although deceased for several hundred years, also play a role. The system they created, giving power to states instead of people made the 36 guy's task more complicated but with greater opportunities. He didn't have to divide the entire country, just a set of seemingly arbitrarily chosen states. Ohio and Florida to name two, that somehow were never discussed at the constitutional convention.
So how do you go about this tactic of divisiveness? One way to do that is to focus on wedge issues. Issues like race and sexuality where people have sharp differences and where compromise is difficult. Economics are a big issue. Most people, benefit from globalization, but the people in the majority don't all benefit from it in the same way.
Divisiveness works not just with issues, it also works with institutions and people. You are concerned with a generally accepted mainstream media? What you do is divide it up. Journalists aren't just journalists, they are liberal journalists and conservative journalists, and you give people permission to listen to voices you like and ignore the voices you don't. And you know, all of this stuff works. Donald Trump, the contemptible demagogue is elected president, and by the way, despite unpopularity and incompetence, is virtually a lock for reelection.
And I have to ask, is this such a bad thing? Are we as a nation better off when we are divided?
--Hiram
I did get the numbers wrong, it's 64-34.
What are the tactical problems faced by a division politician? Issue fatigue is one of them. We can latch onto specific occasions where our wedge issue comes into play, but we soon become bored with them. The attention of the public moves on. So the wedge politician has to find new and different situations in which to play out his weddge drama. Donald Trump is a master of that, both in the way he uses it to benefit himself and in the way he discredits those who don't support him, all those nasty little boys who insist on pointing out the king's nakedness.
For the Donald, the NFL provided the perfect target of opportunity. Our country is unusual in not seeing sports in poltitical. For a Catalan, his football team is an expression of his national identity. But that isn't true for Americans. Countless people will tell you football is a place where we put politics aside. On Thanksgiving, both white and black families will eat turkey, watch the Detroit game and snooze through the Dallas game. It's been a tradition as long as I can remember. We live in a society that is deeply divided along racial lines, geographically, politically and culturally. When you think about it NFL football is one place we all come together. As critical as I am of football, and not being a football fan myself, even I think that's a wonderful thing about it. That being the case, think about how wonderful a target that makes the NFL for the politician who seeks and needs to divide us. That's because the unity of the NFL, while real, is also superficial. Just below the surface there are deep divisions ready for the demagogue to exploit. Our national sport is in fact dominated by African Americans, something that's true but we are not supposed to talk about. It is also controlled by a small but powerful clique of white men, people who we refer to rather unfortunately given the historical context, as "owners". How easy it is to zero on the issues that divide those two groups and exploit them for political advantage. And note the ease with which Donald Trump is his effort to prop up a senatorial candidate running in a state with a sad racial history, was able to do that. I think that was a bad thing to do. But I also acknowledge that from Donald Trump's point of view it's smart and thematic politics. It may not make America greater, but sure does help to ensure his re-election, and for Donald does anything really count besides that?
--
What Donald does and what is news is not necessarily the same thing.
I find it interesting that the "news" chooses to give so much air time to each tweet, statement, etc. The challenge for them though is that apparently us customers seem to want to hear endless back and forths regarding these topics...
What Donald does and what is news is not necessarily the same thing.
this is the kind of division that works for Trump, Donald wants some things to be news, other things not to be news. It shouldn't have been news that the king was naked, his comments on foreign policy should have been the story the press was covering. Why should the sensibility of the child pointing out the monarch's state of undress be the point of focus? Why is the child's perspective more valid than anyone else's? And even I recongnize there is some validity to that point. The king's nudity isn't as important as his health care policy, or whether he is about to sanction his neighboring kingdom. But in acknowledging that, I suggest, that the king is pressing his own news agenda for his own personal benefit. He is manipulating the public for political advantage. And that means the news media has two big jobs, first to explain clearly what is going on, and secondly, in no way to allow the king to set the agenda for reporting.
--Hiram
"Wizard of Oz" since childhood, has been one of my favorite movies, both because of it's insights into politics and the nature of what it means to be human and because it's songs. It's one of the great 1939 movies and all great 1939 movies are thinly disguised analyses of fascism, something that gives the film added relevance today. Anyway, the scene I am thinking of now is when the wizard tries to do what politicians love to do, which is control the message. Pay no attention to that man behind the screen, the wizard says. Focus on the flames and the show, I would add and ignore the substance of who I am and what I am doing. The shiny distraction is all. For some of us, like Donald Trump who grew up when that movie was an event showing once every year, that is one of the messages the movie teaches. Is that the message we should take to heart? Or should we align ourselves with meek and mild Dorothy who insists on seeing things as they are?
==Hiram
I find it interesting that the "news" chooses to give so much air time to each tweet, statement, etc
Bear in mind that Trump avoids interviews with journalists. His last one was with Lester Holt and it was sort of a disaster. At this point, any encounter with a journalist just isn't feasible because of accumulated issues and scandals.
--Hiram
Instead of willing the news to go in a certain direction, we should wait and see if it actually does.
Covering news means following and telling a story, and inevitably telling a story involves an act of will by the story teller. Let's look at the Roy Moore story. The Post journalist was covering something related but different when she stumbled across the Moore info. What should she as a journalist have done at that point? Should she have waited passively for more information to come her way? Or she she have actively sought it out? Which path involves willing a story to go in a certain direction, it that isn't what she was supposed to do.
Roy Moore advocates say it was wrong for the journalist to push the source to give the information. They say the journalist should have waited for the woman to contact her, and that the journalist should have been a passive transcriber of what someone else was willing to say or not say. Are the Roy Moore advocates right?
--Hiram
My point is that since Trump is the show man just throwing out flames, why not just focus on the many other things happening in the world?
I mean both the far left and far righted are absolutely obsessed with everything he says and does.
The Far Right folks act like he is the Messiah come again...
The Far Left focus act like he is a devil incarnate...
And both give him what he craves most in this world... Attention.
"My point is that since Trump is the show man just throwing out flames, why not just focus on the many other things happening in the world?"
He's the President of the United States (you should know, you voted for him). You can't just put him in the corner and ignore him.
Sean,
Why not?
Does covering, picking apart, gnashing teeth and moaning about every little thing he says, tweets and does help anyone in anyway?
I understand covering when a law passes, a regulation is repealed, an executive order is released, etc. But covering that Trump tweeted about Franken is just silly and giving him attention. Or what shoes the first lady wore to Texas...
My point is that since Trump is the show man just throwing out flames, why not just focus on the many other things happening in the world?
Trump exploits the commericiality of journalism. He knows they have to sell papers. And he knows that the essence of news is that it's new. More than anyone Trump knows how to take advantage of the moment and also when to move on. He leaves the boring policy stuff to the Hillary Clintons of the world. Our failure to respond to these talents effectively help to explain how we lost the election to the extent we did.
Good wedge issue are hot. They are issues people are passionate about and the media is always willing to give them play. Donald plays well with two of the biggies, race and sex and neither ever goes out of style.
--Hiram
"But covering that Trump tweeted about Franken is just silly and giving him attention."
When you have a President who has himself been accused of untoward behavior towards women, his comments on the behavior of other politicians is indeed newsworthy.
Sean,
It shows his hypocrisy, but it sure is not news worthy from my perspective. The voters new all about Trump's past when they voted him in. No news here.
Though it did entice the media to put Trump on the front page again. Just where he likes to be.
Hiram,
You are correct, Trump is the master of playing the media and it's customers.
I wonder what would happen if CNN just decided to ignore him for just 1 week?
Just focus on other news...
"I wonder what would happen if CNN just decided to ignore him for just 1 week?"
What, specifically, are you going to cover as one of the cable networks without talking about the President?
What did they talk about when Obama was in office?
I am certain he did not get 1/10th of the headlines that Trump gets.
Or maybe Trump is just 10 times more active and news worthy?
What did they talk about when Obama was in office?
Bemghazi. Tax office scandals. But Obama was a different kind of president. For one thing, he was a majority president. He was hurt by divisive politics; he didn't want his majority broken up. But on any given day, what President Obama did would dominate the news. The difference was that Obama was respected by Republicans, in ways we don't respect Trump.
--Hiram
The Far Right folks act like he is the Messiah come again...
No. The Far right isn't stupid. They made a deal with a figurative devil in Donald Trump and surely they know it. Trump promised them right wing supreme court justices, and that he would sign off on whatever political agenda they would fashion, and the right agreed they would overlook, basically the fact of Donald Trump. I hear no hosannas from the other side of the political spectrum, no tributes to his character. When such issues come up, the response is awkward and embarrassed silence.
--Hiram
The media could do a better job covering Trump, but that really isn't the heart of the problem. In fact, not even Trump is at the heart of the Trump. His presidency is just part of our national decline that's been in progress for a while now.
--Hiram
Not back to that "national decline" again...
Trump is 10 times more idiotic (make that 100 times)
Trump makes news by nearly nonstop saying, doing or tweeting stupid stuff (and lies)
Obama, saying normal stuff in a presidential way, probably did get less front page headlines.
Or did Obama say and do things that were not news worthy?
To me he was pretty boring and not very dynamic.
Now if Trump gets all this air time because he is saying, doing and tweeting stupid stuff. How does qualify as news?
As a citizen I want to know how stupid the president is. The steady drumbeat of lies and idiocy may inspire me to political action.
about Obama - being presidential is supposed to come off as boring. When he was campaigning he was a fantastic speaker. Obama's comments on the campaign trail inspired me to political action in a good way. Have I ever mentioned that I once shook his hand?
A federal judge dismissed Trump's change in policy with respect to transgender military because it was arbitrarily and capriciously announced in a tweet. That's an argument, I suppose, ignoring what our duly elect president says, one of many.
--Hiram
You know I do have a concern here. In fairness to conservatives, no substantial figure on the right ever engaged in public displays of the open contempt and ridicule of President Obama that we have seen toward Donald Trump. Even the birther issue, was left to marginal and unrespected individuals who no one took seriously. People like Donald Trump at the time.
Trump, like the Kardashian's, gets lots of coverage. He is the human equivalent of a shiny object. It's hard to get around that. One point we could make here is that Trump is widely ignored in his own administration. Does it really make sense to take Trump more seriously than his own administration does? It's not a bad argument. There is even a tinge of logic about it.
--Hiram
Laurie,
I agree that Obama was rather charismatic and an excellent speaker. I just think he was mostly talk and little action. Please remember though that I am disagreed with some of his accomplishments and like a Leader that promotes some lively collaboration.
That must have been exciting for you to shake his hand.
Hiram,
I like the shiny object argument.
An improvement maybe the temptation to look at a welding arc on the far side of a room even though you have been repeatedly warned that it will hurt your eyes.
But that bright flickering is so hard to resist... :-)
It is interesting that the administration itself is adopting the attitude that what Trump says is meaningless. We had the transgender tweet, but what was the military's response? The slowest slow walk anyone has ever seen.
Many, many people comfort themselves with the notion that Trump isn't to be taken seriously. That was part of the rationale for voting for him. But what does that mean in practice? Are there costs associated with having a president who lacks credibility? Trump would tell you his unpredictability is one of his strengths, that it allows him to make better deals. But does it really? Is unpredictability one of the things you look for in people you deal with? Do you want your kids taught by teachers who may or may not show up on any given day? Do deposit money in banks whose solvency you are unsure of? Do you get your medications from a pharmacist who gets them right only most of the time? Does it make sense to entrust nuclear weapons to a guy who will only probably will not use them?
--Hiram
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