Media Meltdown and also Media Bias 101

[mtutiger]

14 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

I am a Liberal, but If Trump ran as a Democrat, I would vote Republican.  Before you say that is a ridiculous scenario, consider that he used to be a Democrat.  He'd be a Democrat again if he thought he could win as a Democrat. 

Also, it's really stupid to say that every Democrat is a POS.  I don't think every Republican is a POS.     

Setting aside his lack of morals, decency and honesty both personally and professionally, the big problem with Trump for me isn't so much that he's (now) a Republican. It's that he's a populist... and populism is a pretty big turnoff for a lot of voters because it tends to be long on griping, complaining and exploiting outgroups (ie. all the culture war BS) and short on actual policy solutions.

And unfortunately, he has remade the entire party in his image... even in who the establishment Rs have elevated (ie. DeSantis), they are signaling that they think the problems that voters have with Trump are more style over substance... just repackage the Trumpism without Trump. And it's very much not clear that is the case... 

If the Democratic Party ran a candidate who positioned himself like the above, they wouldn't make it to Super Tuesday, let alone win the whole thing because the largest constituencies in the party (ie. black voters, college whites, etc.) are more policy driven than grievance driven voters.

Edited May 27, 2023 by mtutiger

[chasfh]

After everything we have seen from Trump—not only how he attempted to overthrow America, and still does, but going back into his various personal and business dealings for the past 40-plus years—if you still vote for him, you’re a fan of his, full stop. All the things he wants to do to America is what you want done to America, too. If you still support Trump being president after all that, you can no longer separate your own ethics, morals, and values from his. 

[romad1]

2 hours ago, mtutiger said:

Setting aside his lack of morals, decency and honesty both personally and professionally, the big problem with Trump for me isn't so much that he's (now) a Republican. It's that he's a populist... and populism is a pretty big turnoff for a lot of voters because it tends to be long on griping, complaining and exploiting outgroups (ie. all the culture war BS) and short on actual policy solutions.

And unfortunately, he has remade the entire party in his image... even in who the establishment Rs have elevated (ie. DeSantis), they are signaling that they think the problems that voters have with Trump are more style over substance... just repackage the Trumpism without Trump. And it's very much not clear that is the case... 

If the Democratic Party ran a candidate who positioned himself like the above, they wouldn't make it to Super Tuesday, let alone win the whole thing because the largest constituencies in the party (ie. black voters, college whites, etc.) are more policy driven than grievance driven voters.

This is really good.  

[pfife]

 

 

[romad1]

Oh, how the once-hot have fallen

 

[gehringer_2]

10 hours ago, pfife said:

 

 

I got through about half of this before the site threw me out for some reason, but the conclusion from what I did read is that Licht is mostly an incompetent programmer - he may have an idea of where he wants to get but functionally he has no clue what a news organization needs, either leadership nor programming wise, to get there. On the negative side he knows what he doesn't want but on the positve side his ideas for what to do have been failures.

Edited June 3, 2023 by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

 

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I got through about half of this before the site threw me out for some reason, but the conclusion from what I did read is that Licht is basically incompetent - he may have an idea of where he wants to get but functionally he has no clue what his organization needs, either leadership nor programming wise, to get there.

That's about as far as I got. He seems to have been a good producer as evidenced by Morning Joe and its predecessor and his work with Colbert. That doesn't necessary translate to head of a company.

My feeling is there are too many chiefs in the CNN/Warner corporate structure and not enough competent  middle management folks. The other problems arise when news operations are expected to be a profit center.

The hay days of news operations like CBS, NBC ABC were when they weren't expected to be profit centers. I'm also not sure CNN can ever get back to their "hay days' when they were owned by Ted Turner, then they were basically the only game in town. Like most media, those days are long gone.

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

 

That's about as far as I got. He seems to have been a good producer as evidenced by Morning Joe and its predecessor and his work with Colbert. That doesn't necessary translate to head of a company.

My feeling is there are too many chiefs in the CNN/Warner corporate structure and not enough competent  middle management folks. The other problems arise when news operations are expected to be a profit center.

The hay days of news operations like CBS, NBC ABC were when they weren't expected to be profit centers. I'm also not sure CNN can ever get back to their "hay days' when they were owned by Ted Turner, then they were basically the only game in town. Like most media, those days are long gone.

I thought the other interesting thing I didn't see any trace of in Alberta's reporting was any talk about *news gathering*. If he wants to be the trusted source, at least some of the effort has to be redirected into simply being a better news source. Licht may not believe it but despite that it may be true they spend too much time at 'level 11', I think MSNBC has done a better job as a news source than CNN. In recent years MSNBC has had people in the field like Richard Engel that are head and shoulders above CNN's staff.

[romad1]

The ABC news broadcast is pretty decent middle of the road stuff.  They use a variety of reporters around the world.  i don't know if it would pass the MAGA bigot test but they do very good job documenting.   The lame end of broadcast story with the soldier coming home to meet his puppies or the firefighter who used all of his pay to buy American flags stuff is a bit gagmaking.

[Jim Cowan]

2 hours ago, romad1 said:

Oh, how the once-hot have fallen

 

"Reporters are demonitized" lol.

[chasfh]

3 hours ago, romad1 said:

The ABC news broadcast is pretty decent middle of the road stuff.  They use a variety of reporters around the world.  i don't know if it would pass the MAGA bigot test but they do very good job documenting.   The lame end of broadcast story with the soldier coming home to meet his puppies or the firefighter who used all of his pay to buy American flags stuff is a bit gagmaking.

Man, you have definitely been born again lib! 💀

[romad1]

1 hour ago, chasfh said:

Man, you have definitely been born again lib! 💀

I just pared all my beliefs down to the essentials and am clinging to those like a rock.   I'm still very Reagan about national security, but absolutely against any whiff of a color line.  If you are bigoted; if you tell me Chicago is bad without making it about how the White Sox are terrible people; if you tell me you won't go into the District of Columbia for some reason, it had better be because you don't like traffic.   Because there a lot of coded messages out there.

 

[gehringer_2]

Chuck Todd done at Meet the Press

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/06/04/chuck-todd-leaving-meet-the-press-welker/

👏

Edited June 4, 2023 by gehringer_2

[Tiger337]

On 5/27/2023 at 8:48 AM, chasfh said:

After everything we have seen from Trump—not only how he attempted to overthrow America, and still does, but going back into his various personal and business dealings for the past 40-plus years—if you still vote for him, you’re a fan of his, full stop. All the things he wants to do to America is what you want done to America, too. If you still support Trump being president after all that, you can no longer separate your own ethics, morals, and values from his. 

I don't think it's that simple.  Most people either don't follow this stuff as closely as we do or they have been inundated by right wing media and receive completely different information than us.   They don't even realize that he attempted to overturn the election because it has been pounded him into them that it was the Democrats who stole the election.  They think we are the naive ones.  This is not a small extremist group of individuals.  It's probably at least 100 million people.  

[Motown Bombers]

 

[Tigerbomb13]

That didn’t work out so well

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tigerbomb13 said:

That didn’t work out so well

Poor Jim Acosta - who's ever going to talk to him now?  

Edited June 7, 2023 by gehringer_2

[gehringer_2]

Axios reports Fox wants to shut down Tucker's podcast

https://www.axios.com/2023/06/07/fox-news-tucker-carlson-contract-breach

[Crazy Cat Gentleman]

 

[romad1]

12 minutes ago, Crazy Cat Gentleman said:

 

That's stunningly stupid.   As if Ukraine were responsible.  As if the Chernobyl disaster didn't occur in Ukraine.   "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth" 

[chasfh]

1 hour ago, romad1 said:

That's stunningly stupid.   As if Ukraine were responsible.  As if the Chernobyl disaster didn't occur in Ukraine.   "Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth" 

Specific to media, I've been wondering here and there over the past year or so whether lower-level hired hands like subeditors and whatnot could be injecting their own personal views through their subtle selection of things like headlines or copy editing and the like.

Only by way of example, and not necessarily in this case, but in cases like this, and only maybe, and just hypothesizing here—someone at the subeditor level who has a pro-Russia bias could select headline language that or props up Russian, or disparages or belittles Ukraine. This kind of thing would not be limited to right-wingers and could happen along any political persuasion.

My point being, I just wonder how much of that happens, if at all.

[gehringer_2]

I guess I'm going to dissent here. The impact is ecological, long term and widespread - i.e. similar to Chernobyl. I don't see any necessary reason to draw a culpability implication from that headline syntax. Sure you can if you are looking for them and absolutely I agree headline writers often do readers serious disservice, but I'm not sure I see it here. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

But I think there is one other logical error being made in the coverage of  Kakhovka. Not to be PollyAnn'ish here, but the implicit assumption in the reporting is that dam loss puts everything at square one. Not quite true. When the war is over and the dam is rebuilt, all the ancillary infrastruture - of which there is a lot, power distribtion, irrigation and potable water distribution systems etc, will still be there waiting for the water level to come back to them. Still a massive undertaking but not the whole original undertaking.

[romad1]

10 minutes ago, chasfh said:

Specific to media, I've been wondering here and there over the past year or so whether lower-level hired hands like subeditors and whatnot could be injecting their own personal views through their subtle selection of things like headlines or copy editing and the like.

Only by way of example, and not necessarily in this case, but in cases like this, and only maybe, and just hypothesizing here—someone at the subeditor level who has a pro-Russia bias could select headline language that or props up Russian, or disparages or belittles Ukraine. This kind of thing would not be limited to right-wingers and could happen along any political persuasion.

My point being, I just wonder how much of that happens, if at all.

It definitely happens.   There is also a huge ignorance of any history earlier than when the current generation of employees were in high school and aware of news stories.  There are also manipulations by the bosses.  Roger Ailes surefire did that. You saw that when CNN struck the chyron that had "Sex Abuse" during TFG's townhall. 

[romad1]

3 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I guess I'm going to dissent here. The impact is ecological, long term and widespread - i.e. similar to Chernobyl. I don't see any necessary reason to draw a culpability implication from that headline syntax. Sure you can if you are looking for them and absolutely I agree headline writers often do readers serious disservice, but I'm not sure I see it here. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

But I think there is one other logical error being made in the coverage of  Kakhovka. Not to be PollyAnn'ish here, but the implicit assumption in the reporting is that dam loss puts everything at square one. Not quite true. When the war is over and the dam is rebuilt, all the ancillary infrastruture - of which there is a lot, power distribtion, irrigation and potable water distribution systems etc, will still be there waiting for the water level to come back to them. Still a massive undertaking but not the whole original undertaking.

I think the headline was indicating that the flooding and subsequent draw down of the watershed for the nuclear plant were going to cause that sort of nuclear accident.   But, if it were just the existing flooding, well we've seen that plenty during wartime.  One of the top 5 greatest feats of military aviation involved destroying dams. 

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, romad1 said:

I think the headline was indicating that the flooding and subsequent draw down of the watershed for the nuclear plant were going to cause that sort of nuclear accident. 

Of course the problem isn't really the Nuke plant - it's the Russians occupying it. You don't need the whole Kakhovka reservoir to keep a reactor in cold shutdown safe, but you do need to do something in the several months available before the current water supply runs down - run a temporary water main or maybe sink a well or two etc. But given the malignancy that everything Russian currently is, any of that could turn into a problem it doesn't need to be.

Edited June 12, 2023 by gehringer_2