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I assume I'm not the only one appalled by the MSM continually normalizing Trump & the GOP
It's truly maddening and depressing to see not see their shit called out by the supposedly non-partisan media.
No headline should ever mention Trump without a negative attribute of some sort. No story should be published without mentioning his fascist election denial, multiple crimes and white supremacy.
64 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Shed No Tears for Jeff Zucker, Trump's Great Enabler
At NBC and CNN, Zucker was key to Trump’s rise
by Eric Alterman
The American Prospect / Altercation, Feb. 3, 2022
I have to say I’m amused by all the crocodile tears being shed for Jeff Zucker’s forced resignation from CNN. Obviously, he is gone for reasons other than the ones being given; that was a slap-on-the-wrist sort of violation for a network president. (My out-of-the-bleachers guess would be that it is directly related to Chris Cuomo’s suit against CNN.) CNN whiners should be ashamed of themselves for defending him. Yes, he’s not as bad as the criminal whorehouse operator, Roger Ailes. (That’s how they get you: "Defining Deviancy Down" …) But his reign at CNN had one crucial world historical impact: the promotion of Donald Trump and his brand of entertaining fascism to the U.S. and the world. As for CNN, it was the network’s refusal to distinguish between what its journalists know to be true and what they know to be a lie for the benefit of those who depend on it for news.
The following paragraph is drawn from my 2020 book Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump Is Worse:
Trump’s fame was mostly confined to Manhattan-based gossip writers and broadcasters until 2004, when he teamed up with the television producer Mark Burnett to create The Apprentice. Jeff Zucker, an NBC executive who later moved on to CNN in time for the 2016 campaign, gave the program the green light. "The show was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle," according to a 2016 Trump biography. Naturally, it was a lie from start to finish. The Apprentice was filmed in his offices in Trump Tower, but, as one of the show’s producers told a reporter from The New Yorker, "We walked through the offices and saw chipped furniture. We saw a crumbling empire at every turn. Our job was to make it seem otherwise." According to a supervising editor on the show, the producers’ "first priority on every episode … was to reverse-engineer the show to make it look like his judgment had some basis in reality."
Trump entered the presidential race in November 2015 at a moment when the always tenuous line between "entertainment" and politics was rapidly and purposely being erased. And it was around this time that the same Jeff Zucker landed the top job at CNN. "The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way," he told a reporter. And just as sports broadcasters hire hosts who can make boring games sound interesting, and keep the audience entertained regardless of their level of expertise, so, too, Zucker chose pundits with no discernible qualifications save their willingness to sing the praises of Donald Trump. He hired Jeffrey Lord, a journeyman conservative author who repeatedly compared Trump to Martin Luther King Jr., and Kayleigh McEnany, an attractive young law student who consistently argued that Trump "doesn’t lie," but that instead, "the press lies." (McEnany was rewarded for these arguments with an appointment in 2017 as the Republican National Committee spokesperson, and, two years later, for the same position in Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, before becoming Trump’s presidential press secretary, also in 2020.) According to Zucker’s preferred metric, these hires were more than justified. "Everybody says, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you have Jeffrey Lord or Kayleigh McEnany,’" he said. "But you know what? They don’t know who Jeffrey Lord and Kayleigh McEnany are"—as if this somehow justified their lies and the lunatic conspiracy theories they passed along to viewers.
Zucker even proved willing to hire Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, in June 2016, not long after an incident in which Lewandowski was charged with misdemeanor battery following his physical attack on a female reporter whose question he did not like. (The charges were later dropped, though not before Lewandowski was accused by another Trump supporter of sexual assault.) Lewandowski had lost an internal power struggle within the Trump campaign, and with it his job. Such a hire would not normally be considered unusual in the incestuous world of cable TV commentary, but in this case, Lewandowski had signed a nondisclosure agreement that contained a nondisparagement clause before leaving the campaign. That meant he was legally enjoined from saying anything that might reflect badly on Trump—even if it was truthful. Zucker did not care. Truth was not the metric: Ratings were. (In September 2019, Lewandowski testified before the House Judiciary Committee investigating impeachment and admitted, "I have no obligation to be honest to the media because they’re just as dishonest as anybody else." He was booked on CNN that same night.)
Owing to the strong ratings that Trump-themed programming earned the network during the election season, Zucker constantly pressured his staff to keep the focus on Trump’s campaign. CNN was happy to broadcast the candidate’s lies unmediated and uninterrupted, whether they were offered on the phone, in live interviews, or during rallies. According to the nonpartisan fact-checking site PolitiFact, which investigated 158 statements Trump had made on the campaign trail before June 2016, 78 percent of those statements were false, mostly false, or "pants on fire." Only about 3 percent of the statements it investigated were judged to be entirely true. The other 19 percent were half true or mostly true.
Continues…
https://americanprospect.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=ab1a4d0dd4d48a2ba1077c4494791306.1331&s=bb6bef2a4b7e3fbe7fcc8d721fca4907
The press is the only business mentioned by name in the Constitution. And CNN has made certain the new boss will be worse for democracy.
iF it were complicated, it would be complicated. It ain't. IT IS VERY SIMPLE.
Yes "Porn if they could." Totally CORRECT. I had to repeat that one. 
Republicans have put some pretty serious conditions on that in the last decade or so, i.e. say anything bad about Republicans and no access for you. Couple that with the fact that much of our national media care far more about their own 6 to 8 figure paychecks and outlet bottom line than they do about democracy or anything else of substance and you get what we have now.
If said scribblers and yacking heads were in Russia, they'd be "mouth piecing" Putin and quite happy to do so. It's who they are. It's how the roll. They make me sick.
Yes...I'm beating on the media again because they fucking deserve to be beat on. 
