I'm sick of the media complaining about their treatment nowadays.

[LonePirate]

This may be an unpopular opinion as I have grown weary of reading forlorn articles and tweets from the media and hearing talking heads on television bemoan the treatment they are receiving from 45, his cronies in DC and the deplorables across the land. Yes, the First Amendment is the backbone to our democracy; but the journalistic media is responsible for the shitshow they are facing right now.

The media manipulation by 45 via his tweets in lieu of press conferences and interviews? The media's fault because of their screwed up priorities and laziness.

The repeated lies told by cabinet secretaries and other representatives of the White House? The media's fault for not calling out the lies and giving those people a platform in the first place.

The threats of violence and harassment from the deplorables against members of the media? While certainly the deplorables bear responsibility, the media is also culpable because they largely gave 45 a free pass during the 2016 elections while they threw everything they had into destroying Hillary and not focusing on the issues. The media formed the beast we have in the White House. They gleefully and uncritically disseminated his propaganda and they actively fought to prevent an honorable and competent public servant from becoming president.

In short, I no longer have any sympathy for the media's tears. They shoulder an enormous responsibility for the mess they helped create which we're all suffering from now. The hardships they endure now can all be traced to their malfeasance during 2016. Their complaints ring hollow to me now and I no longer have the patience to listen to them whine any longer about it. They are as much a problem right now as 45.

[world wide wally]

1. I saw this coming during the campaign when Trump locked them in cages and urged his

deplorables to throw feces at them while calling them "scum of the Earth" and yet they persisted in covering him 24/7
WTF did they expect?

[customerserviceguy]

11. Just one week without mentioning Trump's tweets

no matter what "new outrageous" thing is in them, might stop feeding the beast.

Trump thrives on attention, and he manipulated the media deftly during his campaign to keep any attention away from his political challengers, as the media was focused instead on his non-political challengers.

It's worth a try, they could all declare that for one week starting "X" they will not report anything regarding his Twitter account. It will drive Trump nuts, but we won't be able to tell the difference. We all know what doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is called.

[pangaia]

15. good idea. BUT...

Instead of declaring it, just quietly among themselves all decide to ignore them...

[world wide wally]

26. Brilliant!

So, it probably won't happen

[emulatorloo]

2. Unfortunately the issue is bigger than our annoyance at pre-election media.

You're certainly entitled to your opinion and I agree some media outlets are culpable by not doing their job prior to the election.

However a President attempting to delegitimize the free press as liars and fake news is a huge problem. A President attempting to blackmail some people in the press by revealing their sexual secrets unless they provide uncritical coverage is a huge problem as well.

Those are big picture items. It isn't about personalities of some people you and I might not like. It is about a threat to our country and our right to know from the executive branch.

Lastly will note CNN, WAPO, and NYT are doing their job now and quite well. Investigative reporting by those outlets have revealed a lot that the Trump Regime would like to bury. That's why he's trying his damnednest to call their truths "Fake."
,

[JHan]

3. I agree with LonePirate but you raise important points as well...

I think Trump wants the fourth estate completely destroyed and made irrelevant. If he could refashion our institutions solely to his benefit he would.

[pangaia]

16. Of course he does.. absolutely right...

it is part of authoritarianism...

the media.
the courts
the intelligence agencies
the police
government departments from one end to the other

It is what is happening!!

[EleanorR]

4. Spot on n/t

[Squinch]

7. +1

[lunatica]

10. thank you

blanket condemnations don't get anything solved.

At least the media is being forced to re-evaluate itself and some of it has evolved.

[pangaia]

17. You know, I really do not know if 'the media' is re-evaluating themselves,

or, if this behavior is just where the current KA-CHING is !!!

[Coventina]

12. Thank you for pointing this out.

The "Free Press" needs to be free.

Even when we disagree with them.

[Wellstone ruled]

5. When the Cable News Exec's

declared Trump great for Ratings,you knew the fix was in. Now we see a couple of Media sources trying to capture the high ground. Kind of late in the game. They still are not attacking the sources of this Manure Pile,and until that happens,we are still seeing the Ratings Game being played.

[pangaia]

18. RATINGS GAME bingo...

Playing the high ground because that is where the current money is..

Just wait.. they will change yet again..


"Awww, now everybody is picking on the administration."

[Wellstone ruled]

22. Corporate Media and it will stay the course until they get their

mega tax breaks. Game,Set,and Match!!

[NCTraveler]

6. Few today are in the business of reporting the news.

They have found that they can generate the news.

[Demsrule86]

8. Regardless...we need a free press.

[KWR65]

9. The American media only cares about ratings so they can sell advertising.

Everything is clickbait on the Internet also so that more eyeballs will view the web advertisement and hopefully accidentally click the pop up ads or autoplay of video advertisements. Also the so-called cable news out lets are nothing but talk television created to sell advertising. The experts follow a script to create controversy and get more eyeballs to up the price on advertising. I don't watch any of it anymore . Of course, local news doesn't exist at all where I live unless there is a cute cat story to report or some scandal like the councilman had an affair with his Secretary. YMMV.
Thank goodness for ad blocker.

[emulatorloo]

13. News depts in some media still seems to have some independence from the bean counters in accounting

IMHO. I'm talking about "old media" like newspapers and even some network TV news.


But I def agree with your analysis of 24/7 cable news outlets. Many "blog" sites are the same, as we saw this past election.

[Honeycombe8]

20. Not what I'm reading.

Media is in print. on the internet (sites, Youtube, social media), on TV.

Ratings are a necessary evil, just like subscriptions and ads are and always have been necessary for newspapers to exist.

Would you prefer a government-sponsored monolithic media that prints what the govt wants it to? That way, they don't need to sell advertising.

Now that that's out of the way...the media consists of tens of thousands of NEWS OUTLETS in the country, each one competing to get the story first. They are not one big thing together. They are individuals...just like people are.

NEWS ORGANIZATIONS are different from POLITICAL TALK SHOWS Political talk shows include Morning Joe, Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Maddow, etc. THOSE POLITICAL TALK SHOWS ARE NOT NEWS, and rely far more on ratings than primary news sources.

The Washington Post, New York Times, and other news organizations follow a code of ethics, have standards, and follow a stated protocol. The editor has the final say of stories. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well around the globe. It's all but impossible for corrupt leaders to keep certain facts out of the news, because of these news organizations.

I respect and admire these news organizations. They send reporters and broadcasters out all around the world. They die in wars, take the most famous photographs of war as it's happening, get captured and imprisoned. Journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Al Qaeda. (Breitbart is never going to put himself in a position to be beheaded; neither is Joe Scarborough, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, etc., etc.)

These guys deserve our respect for the job they do. They are spit on, killed, attacked, criticized. Yet they are responsible for getting the news out to the public, and sometimes they are the ONLY ones willing to stand up to evil leaders. They hit the pavement and interview witnesses, track down leads, all to get the details of hidden stories or complex corruption.

Yeah, I'll take the word of a journalist whose done his homework over a politician or talk show host or pundit any day of the week. Not to say that talk show hosts and pundits don't serve a purpose or aren't useful. They are. But they are not in the business of news. They interpret the news, present it, analyze it.

BTW, Breitbart and others of that ilk that have a mere presence on the internet, are not, as far as I know news organizations. They don't have a code of ethics, follow a journalistic protocol, or anything of that sort.

When a REAL news source says it has an unnamed source, it does (except in unusual cases where the WRITER has falsified that, which can happen, although rarely). NEWS organizations live on their credibility and reliability.

Watch the movie "All the President's Men" to see the workings of The Washington Post's protocol for printing stories and how the journalists track down and source stories and get information.

[KWR65]

23. The vast majority of the media is owned by a few corporations.

They do not serve a public interest at all when their only goal is to push advertising rates up and clickbait news article are posted on the Internet.

[Honeycombe8]

24. Yes, they do serve the public interest. You are making the same mistake the ReThugs make...

you think some connection with such and such corporation means that corporation's views are uppermost. ReThugs think that because Fox is that way, Breitbart is that way, etc.

But not so for actual NEWS ORGANIZATIONS. They are independent, and no news person or journalist worth his salt would ever skew his views, or intentionally fake the story, to please the boss.

News people are INDIVIDUALS, all competing with each other.

News org. is owned by XYZ corporation. XYZ knows that if their news organization doesn't get the story first, and publish it first, they'll be down in the readership. THEY DON'T CARE WHAT THE STORY IS. People don't seem to get that. It doesn't matter what the story is, as long as it's sourced, written well, accurate, and hopefully FIRST.

All the news orgs and all the journalists are in competition with each other. The name of the game is to GET the story, whatever it is, and report it first.

Let's say XYZ doesn't want the story reported...that won't do any good. Because the story will be reported by other news organizations, who will then get the advertising dollars, feathers in their caps, another story added to their cred, and maybe start beng known as the org. that gets the story first, so readership goes up. XYZ killing a story would only hurt itself.

News organizations are NOT like sitcoms or even political talk shows.

Watch the movie All the President's Men. Take a journalism course. Most people I think don't get that news organizations are different from other types of news dissemination sources.

[KWR65]

29. They serve the profit interest of their investors

There is no mistake in that. That is why 99.9% news is just to get eyeballs on the screen or click bait on the web.

[Honeycombe8]

30. Wrong. They are in the NEWS business, where there is a protocol and ethics.

Every business needs to make a profit. This has always been the case. BUT PROFIT COMES FROM ALL DIRECTIONS, so that there is no cowtowing to a particular sector.

Their business is NEWS, and their credibility and reliability relies on accurate reporting, as well as getting the story first.

They are in competition with each other. There are tens of thousands of journalists across the globe. THANKS TO THEM, it is almost impossible for people like Trump to keep stories from reaching the public. And THAT is why he is so angry and calling them the "enemy of the people."

If they were doing fake stories for a profit, Trump wouldn't be angry. He'd just see that they got paid. Easy. BUT THEY ARE NOT FOR SALE. Trump has a problem with people he can't buy or threaten to do his bidding.

THANK GOD for the free press. That's why our founding fathers protected this bastion of freedom of speech for the citizens. It is critical, as we are now seeing.

No, it's not true that Trump had the largest inauguration audience in history. We know this because of the press.
It's not true that Trump had the largest electoral vote win in recent history.
It's not true that Trump is keeping his campaign promises; it's just the opposite in some cases, in fact. We know this because of the press.

Russia did interfere with the election. We know this because of the press
Sessions did have meetings with Russians during the campaign. We know this because of the press.
Flynn was on the payroll of Turkey and Russia when serving as our National Security Advisor. We know this because of the press.

Trump tried to get Comey to drop the Flynn investigation. We found out about this through the free press.
Several members of the administration are being investigated for colluding with Russia, as well as for money laundering and lying to the FBI. We know this because of the free press.
People are not wanting to join the administration, now. We know this from the free press.


And numerous other examples. Trump can't control the free press, which is why he's attacking it, trying to get people to be against it, so that he can control the news. If the new organizations were for sale, he would be able to control them.

Thank goodness the forefathers knew that the free press would be critical to the citizens, and protected it.

(A news organization is not a political talk show. Hannity is bought and paid for, but he is not a news organization or a journalist. He's in entertainment, as is Rush Limbaugh. Neither of them is free to tell a story that his rightwing benefactors wouldn't like. But news organizations are.)

If the corporate owner of a news organization tries to dictate what stories are printed, it would only hurt itself. News organizations are only successful if they are accurate, sourced, and hopefully first, so that they can rely on their credibility and reliability. This is distinguished from internet & radio partisan hack sites that pretend to be news, when they are not (Breitbar.tcom, Levin, Limpballs, etc.).

Legitimate news organizations have journalists on staff who research and write the news. Not political hacks who present one point of view. Not all media are legitimate news organizations.

[JCanete]

31. You have more faith in the media than you should. Most outlets have a vested interest in appearing

to be impartial and non-partisan, and to cover important stories.

I guess the question is, who are the actual News organizations you speak of? The NYT that helped to bring us the Iraq war by trading coziness with the administration and getting embedded for pro-war propaganda?

Yes, Trump is so buffoonish that even corporate media would not risk damaging its own credibility to hide the blemishes on this administration, or smooth them over, because the effort would be so egregiously obvious and lame. Actually, it isn't that it hasn't tried...cue Fareed Zakaria and Van Jones...but those efforts have flailed in the context of daily Presidential absurdities.

Of course the reporters etc. at these institutions aren't monolithic in their thinking. There is an element of independence. But what the producers and editors decide to push or subsume or ignore entirely still matters, and which journalists and pundits and columnists these organizations hire often reflects the values and thinking of the owners. That may be even more evident in who they never hire.

Also, you can still be "essentially" truthful by simply not reporting on something. You can still be factually correct and entirely spin the content of an article with a misleading headline, or with the writing itself. There are too many examples of the "News", whether print or cable, has ignored stories until they could no longer be ignored...thank you internet for at least temporarily forcing the corporate media, which almost had a chokehold on reality, to be somewhat, begrudgingly, honest.


Yes, we absolutely NEED a 4th estate, and I also have no idea how one would be accomplished that was entirely state driven, but corporately driven media is far more invested in bigger things than ratings. It is often owned by companies with far bigger interests than its news department. Newspapers are far more reliant on advertisements than even ratings, and there are cases where the ratings are less of an issue to those who are doing the advertising. At times advertising dollars trading hands are about buying a paper's friendship.

It is a sad day that we are forced into a side with CNN as the champion of truth and integrity against a lying administration. CNN is empty tripe for the most part. CNN has a lot to own about the Trump Presidency itself, just like FOX and half of MSNBC. It makes me ill that I have to be on their side, or Joe and Mika's side. They are all crap, and being the enemy of my enemy doesn't change that fact.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

14. I think it's wrong to think of "the media" as one big monolithic agency.

What you accuse "the media" of is valid but it only applies to some members of the media. The dangerous attacks from the Trump administration will affect all members of the media. If they can take down Morning Joe, they can take down CNN; and if they can take down CNN they can take down freedom of the press as a whole.

[Honeycombe8]

19. I strongly disagree. nt

[LiberalLovinLug]

21. What you say is all true but...

...its a catch 22. One of the reasons MSM news gets such low scores for trust is that they are distrusted by both the left and the right. The right for simply telling the truth and making Trump look like the asshole he is, and the left for not being hard enough on him, especially through 2016. And before that, playing the false equivalency game in order not to ruffle feathers and keep the GOP guests coming back. And ingnoring stories or downplaying and misrepresenting stories like Occupy. As far back as when Bush declared war on Iraq, the largest protest in US history down the very streets in NY where the terrorists struck, was largely ignored or made to look like it was only made up of scary long haired punks.

So I can't blame more left of center, Democratic viewers voting that they don't trust them much either, but what that does is give the right more fodder to interpret that to the public that they are fake news and not supported BECAUSE of their lefty commie Democrat loving liberal elite agenda.

[ck4829]

25. K&R. Trump being an adversary doesn't automatically mean any anti-Trump media is an ally.

[Fluke a Snooker]

27. The media is indispensible to the progressive movement agenda

Without pushback from the populace via the media, the Republican oppressionist agenda would run roughshod over the country, and in extension the entire planet. The press must keep what it is doing and forget what the deplorables are whining about.

[Vogon_Glory]

28. A few parts of the media did what a responsible press should do: report real news

Sadly, with scattered exceptions like Rachel Maddox, the broadcast media chose to be Trump's tools. I have very little respect left for the broadcast media; they deserve to be treated with contempt.

[Blue_Tires]

32. Nevermind the fact that CNN went even further by

putting multiple Trump lackeys on the payroll (in a fucking election year)

Aside from Moscow, CNN is most responsible for Trump's rise and usurpation of power