The News and its New Silent Majority: Clinton Supporters

[Skidmore]

https://medium.com/whither-news/the-news-and-its-new-silent-majority-clinton-supporters-65dc5e0a4d76#.o1ldxnlax

This election, I’ve been trying an experiment, judging journalism from a different perspective, from the outside, as a member of a community and a partisan. I don’t like what I’m learning about my profession.

We journalists tend to separate ourselves from the public we serve. We call ourselves objective, to distinguish us from the opinionated masses and to enable us to rise above their fray. We fancy ourselves observers, not actors, in the dramas we chronicle. I’ve argued that we must end that separation and learn to empathize with the needs and goals of the communities we serve, even considering ourselves members of those communities. Thus, social journalism. But in this argument, the journalist is still the journalist.

Then I found myself in a position to look at the field not as a journalist but as an involved participant in a community. That community: Hillary Clinton supporters....

[orpupilofnature57]

1. " Your Proffesion " either dispenses information or manages perception, one is a service to

the community, the other are Misanthropic Sycophant Monsters running an on running commercial for the 1% and inadvertently themselves and " their community " .

[MADem]

2. I hope people take the time to read this--it's worthwhile....

...I’ve wanted a better understanding of journalism from the public’s perspective and I finally saw I could not do that unless the coverage mattered to me, unless I took it personally. I also realized that this meant I could no longer claim to be standing removed, as the disinterested critic. Some years ago, when I spoke on a panel at the Online News Association, an editor came to the mic complaining about my use of the term “citizen journalism.” She cried (choking back real tears): “I’m a citizen, too.” Then act like a citizen, I said; be a part of your community. Many years later, I decided to take my advice.

.....

Journalism is a lousy mirror.
I don’t see myself in any of the coverage of the campaign. All I ever hear from media is that nobody likes or trusts the one candidate who has an 89 percent chance of winning the presidency. In media, I never hear from voters like me who are enthusiastic supporters. I never see reporters wading among eager backers at Clinton rallies to ask them how much they like her and why. I don’t even hear her surrogates (what a ridiculous beltway/TV invention that is, by the way) asked about their support of Clinton, only their defense of her. In media, I never hear echoes of the voices I heard last week when I met people on the porches of West Philly, who told me their families were all in to vote for Hillary. (Only when I continued the conversation did they also agree we must defeat Trump. Like me, they are voting for, not against. )

I’ve been able to use Twitter to call journalists on this failing. When The Post’s Post’s Chris Cillizza labeled Clinton a “deeply flawed” candidate on CNN once too often, I tweeted a challenge and, to his credit, Cillizza answered. He said polls show that two-thirds of Americans don’t trust her. But compared to whom? Four-fifths of Americans don’t trust journalists. When media keep hammering again and again how untrusted Clinton is, couldn’t that become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
This is why the great James Carey despised the reductionist impact of public opinion polls on democracy and the press:

Public opinion no longer refers to opinions being expressed in public and then recorded in the press. Public opinion is formed by the press and modeled by the public opinion industry and the apparatus of polling. Today, to get ahead of the story, polling (the word, interestingly enough, from the old synonym for voting) is an attempt to simulate public opinion in order to prevent an authentic public opinion from forming. With the rise of the polling industry our entire understanding of the public went into eclipse.

....

The news chases squirrels, calls them rabid, and shoots them...

https://medium.com/whither-news/the-news-and-its-new-silent-majority-clinton-supporters-65dc5e0a4d76#.zaunrd2ak



Good stuff!

[LAS14]

3. Exactly! I'm with you! And I'm with her!!

[politicaljunkie41910]

13. Thanks for posting. Good information. I've seen at least three different polls this week,

each of them reporting on how untrustworthy Clinton is. But each of the stories lead with the fact that Clinton's poll numbers for honesty and trusworthiness were the lowest they'd ever been. None of them felt the need to lead with the fact that Trumps numbers were even lower than hers. If you were just skimming the headlines, you wouldn't know that Trumps numbers were lower than hers.

BTW, this is what 30 years of lies, a 24 Hour Fake News Channel, phoney congressional investigations, Newsmax books with outlandish conspiracy theories, and a continuous cycle of RW talk radio buys you.

[LongTomH]

4. Good quote from James Carey:

"[P]ublic opinion no longer refers to opinions being expressed in public and then recorded in the press. Public opinion is formed by the press and modeled by the public opinion industry and the apparatus of polling. Today, to get ahead of the story, polling (the word, interestingly enough, from the old synonym for voting) is an attempt to simulate public opinion in order to prevent an authentic public opinion from forming. With the rise of the polling industry our entire understanding of the public went into eclipse."

[Hortensis]

5. Journalism: "... a means to inform the public and, in doing so,

cultivate an educated, empathetic, and engaged society." And as said, it has been failing on all counts.

Ultimately, though, that is society's fault. We supply the demand for pleasing distortions and outright lies and even vicious witch hunts and ruin.

[orpupilofnature57]

6. " A society gets the Comcast it deserves " Voltaire

[Hortensis]

7. Wise and prescient man. :)

Kind of unfair to some, though. Goodness knows there are always people who want the truth and to be good citizens.

[Skidmore]

9. Right now, we must fill the role

that the Constitution gave to the press by counteracting the distorted messages they send with the truth. We need to push out the truth on social media and correct the record. We need to write and video the truth and present it to either by these media or by word of mouth to our fellow countrymen and the world. This is why I don't frequent some of my usual boards right now. I've become more involved on Twitter where I can reach a greater number of people quickly. We can work in groups and disseminate much material quickly. I never used that platform much until this last few weeks because I found it annoying, but it can be very effective. By whatever means, we need to push back on the media in their laziness and ignorance.

[Hortensis]

10. Excellent post! Great, Skidmore. I post on another board,

and follow a couple of pro-Hillary FB friends, but I've never gotten involved with Twitter.

[Skidmore]

11. This is an example of the kind of thing

people are doing to get info around:

https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/772072092498026496

[Hortensis]

12. Well, I came up with my sign-on info and "followed."

Seems like an interesting whateveritscalled. Thanks.

[athena]

8. Excellent piece! K&R! (n/t)

[mopinko]

14. boy howdy.

hopefully the long term fallout from this election will be a lot more journalists asking themselves the same questions.

[Wednesdays]

15. Like I always said, show me a journalist with integrity

and I'll show you a person standing in an unemployment line.

[Demsrule86]

16. Great find.

This is a wonderful find.