A questioning press?

Seattle

Seattle

Valued Senior Member
I miss the days of Sam Donaldson and the like where the press asked the hard questions of the President regardless of which party was in power.

We know that Fox News is totally one-sided (or worse) but even the mainstream sites like MSNBC seem to have no journalist integrity. For example (and there are many) Biden wants to forgive $10k-$20k in student debt. I would expect many MSNBC reporters to favor this and some to have a lot of issues with this.

I don't see any that have any issue with this and the only response that they have is that most opposition is from Republicans. There are plenty of problems with Biden's actions and it's just poor journalism to not even critic the pros and cons of this issue.

It's not just this issue though. Every night, whatever the stories of the day are, the commentators all are on the exact same page, night after night. No variation? This isn't journalism IMO. Sure, it's largely under the category of "commentary" but I would think they could do a much better job.

There's no real "discussion" no matter how many experts they have on as they are all completely on the same page. A little nuance would be appreciated, don't you think?
 
Seattle said:
I miss the days of Sam Donaldson and the like where the press asked the hard questions of the President regardless of which party was in power.

We know that Fox News is totally one-sided (or worse) but even the mainstream sites like MSNBC seem to have no journalist integrity. For example (and there are many) Biden wants to forgive $10k-$20k in student debt. I would expect many MSNBC reporters to favor this and some to have a lot of issues with this.

I don't see any that have any issue with this and the only response that they have is that most opposition is from Republicans. There are plenty of problems with Biden's actions and it's just poor journalism to not even critic the pros and cons of this issue.

It's not just this issue though. Every night, whatever the stories of the day are, the commentators all are on the exact same page, night after night. No variation? This isn't journalism IMO. Sure, it's largely under the category of "commentary" but I would think they could do a much better job.

There's no real "discussion" no matter how many experts they have on as they are all completely on the same page. A little nuance would be appreciated, don't you think?
Click to expand...

No reason to take risks anymore when (indeed) there is that aforementioned team of addled "proles" on the DarkSide willing to do the grunt work and open their skewered mouths.

Proles in general (right or left) are still regarded as academically challenged ("stupid") by the mediating, opportunistic, "savior" intellectual class. That's why they need to be rescued from themselves, not just from whatever menacing social class or population group is contingently, specifically plugged into the variable content of the "systemic oppressor" conspiracy placeholder.

That includes future salvation for even those dim-witted prole pawns to the right of center. They just need rehabilitation that can be accomplished by a correct educational establishment; the harshness of Chinese internment camps is not required to maintain or institute national socioeconomic hygiene (albeit maybe it is a quicker and more successful method).

MAINSTREAM:

CNN: left bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/

MSNBC: left bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/msnbc/

CBS: left-center bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/cbs-news/

ABC: left-center bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/abc-news/

NBC: left-center bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/nbc-news/

PBS: left-center bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/pbs-news-hour/

C-SPAN: least biased
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/c-span/

PSYCHOTIC CONTRARIAN LIARS & NON-CONFORMIST DEVIANTS:

FOX NEWS: right bias
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news-bias/

- - -
 
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I just want to make sure people remember they're talking about a network that routinely hires Republlicans as hosts and pundits when they say MSNBC has a "left" bias.

The thing that bothers me most is how many people are willing to opine on left-right bias according to rightist make-believe.

Money is the underlying bias.

It's really hard to take criticism of the journalistic press seriously when people won't account for the role of money, capitalism, and business priorities.

Think of it this way: One of the most belligerent critics of mainstream media in my information circles might occasionally have a point if he would stop making believe. But he doesn't, so when he complains that some journalist is evil because that's just the way she and her cronies are, it is always interesting to check how many ways the lawyer with over a decade as a joiurnalist and even a stint as a news-media CEO apparently doesn't know what goes on in newsrooms and journalism.

Question: How supremacist are any of these organizations? I leave CNN to its own, for instance, because I don't find them credible. The network holds its people to different and prejudicial standards of journalistic conduct according to very interesting criteria. For instance, having met a famous person when she was a child disqualified Octavia Nasr from covering Middle East affairs, while her CNN colleague, Wolf Blitzer, a prominent international affairs reporter including Israel and the Middle East, was a lobbyist for AIPAC, an organization lobbying for American aid and comfort in Israeli crimes against humanity. Knowing that principle is mixed into their coverage tells me what I need to know about the news stories they tell.

With most of American news media, the problematic bias has to do with business decisions; FOX News was always a rightist propaganda operation serving a counterrevolutionary delusion.

Also, MediaBiasFactCheck is known to be unreliable, an unscientific assessment constructed to accommodate rightward politics.
 
Seattle said:
I miss the days of Sam Donaldson and the like where the press asked the hard questions of the President regardless of which party was in power.
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I do too. Though looking back on it from the perspective of today, I start to wonder how objective the big-three broadcast networks really were back in the day. They all had a line that they conformed to, very visible in their treatment of Nixon and the Vietnam war. Perhaps part of our perception that they were objective then is more a function of our own naivete in those years and our having been stripped of comfortable illusions since.

We know that Fox News is totally one-sided (or worse)
Click to expand...

"We"? "Know"? More accurately, 'many democrats hold the opinion that'...

but even the mainstream sites like MSNBC seem to have no journalist integrity.
Click to expand...

I think that all the big-three cable networks (Fox, CNN and MSNBC) are all roughly equal when it comes to actually reporting news events. Imagine a plane crashing. Each network will tell you whose plane it was, where it crashed, how many people were on board, whether there were any survivors and actual facts like that.

But planes aren't crashing 24-7. These 24 hour news networks have all those hours to fill when nothing exciting is happening, so they fill the time with opinion. Typically opinion consonant with the views of the New York City media elites who basically run the news. Opinion has come to dominate our 24 hour media in a way it didn't when we watched 30 minute TV newscasts.

As advertising revenues shrink and the legacy media lose viewers/readers to a million more specialized opinion outlets on the internet, outlets like Fox, CNN and MSNBC have responded by specializing in targeting a desired audience and giving that audience what they want. The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal are doing it too. So are the "news" magazines. All of them are targeting a particular audience demographic that they think will prove profitable in these difficult times of internet competition.

It isn't just business calculation though. It also reflects the personal views of owners, editors and writers. Since most of these lean left and a disproportionate number of them are New Yorkers, they all find themselves battling for the same audience of upscale, well-educated democrats. (Today that's often young, single, college-educated females.) The upper level media people all know each other (it's a tight little world) and they all want the approval of their peers and invites to the best parties. So there's bloody tooth-and-claw competition in the left-space, which fosters extremism as outlets seek to differentiate themselves.

Meanwhile Fox News has the Republican audience pretty much to itself and can therefore be more of a big-tent, welcoming a wider variety of Republican opinion. The Wall Street Journal remains the voice of old-style establishment Republicanism (its name says it all). So Fox and the WSJ don't really compete head-to-head like we see over on the left.

Actually, what's happening is that US "journalism" is gradually starting to look more like its European counterpart, where newspapers and other outlets are often associated with particular political parties and exist to promote that party's line on political and social matters.

I'm not convinced that the concept "mainstream news sources" retains very much meaning in our brave new 21'st century.
 
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For sure the palate of news options has changed with most of it being editorials since there's only so much actual news.

Regarding reporters like Sam Donaldson though, IMO, it was their job and the press in general to be a check to the powers that be so a good White House reporter should ask the tough questions whether Republicans or Democrats were in charge.

There seemed to be more of that in those days where the press was seem as the "4th estate". Now it may be naive to only remember when they did that and not to remember all the times when they asked more softball questions but they did seem to fill that role more than is currently the same.

Just as parties were always partisan but the Congress did seem to exercise more control to serve as a check on Executive power and the same for the Judiciary.

Since Trump, everyone became sheep it seems. That's what populism will/can do.
 
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