Sunday, July 29, 2018

Fake News... Whoops

I had such a happy moment this weekend when I read how the publisher of the New York Times "implored" Trump to stop his attacks on the media because his attacks were "not just divisive, but increasingly dangerous." Oh, that felt good.

Do you remember when the words "fake news" were first spoken? They were spoken by the leftist collective, MSM journalists in particular, and they were repeated by all the other leftist MSM types within hours. Gee, it was like a planned attack. Huh. And who did they attack with this? Fox News and other right-wing sites, and they did it with the idea of de-legitimizing them. In fact, the idea was even grander than that. The idea was that they, the MSM, had just appointed themselves as the arbiters of who would and would not be considered real news. Thus, by simply pointing at someone they didn't like, like Brietbart or Fox, and saying, "Fake News," they could get the herd to stop listening to anything those sites said.

Even more disturbingly, they also spoke of regulating "fake news" sites. So not only would they tell the herd not to listen to places like Fox, but leftists like the New York Times wanted to strip places like Fox and Breitbart of any of the protections our Constitution affords journalists and maybe even get them regulated into reporting only what places like the New York Times thought appropriate.

It was a truly evil idea.

But as you may recall, I chuckled. I chuckled because it was obvious to me that these good little Hitlerian liberals had no idea what kind of monster they were unleashing. The problem was that there was no one to say who could call whom fake news. They didn't see this, though anyone with a brain could. And indeed, within days, that is what happened. Trump was even one of the first to turn this against them. Soon others followed. And it never stopped. Now Trump has taken up this refrain to great effect and it blasting them with it daily.

So this weekend, the New York Times tweeted that Trump needs to stop attacking the MSM as "fake news" because he's killing their reputation with the public and they've hit an all-time low in terms of trustworthiness. Even worse, the Times whined, journalists are finding that the public holds them in such low esteem that the situation is becoming "dangerous" for them as certain less-stable members of the public see them as "enemies of the public" (something Trump has said too).

I have no sympathy for this. Indeed, I think it's well-earned. Keep in mind, as I just discussed, this all started because they were trying to do this very thing to conservative media groups. What's more, they've spent the whole last two years trying to destroy Trump. And I say that meaning it. They aren't criticizing Trump, they are trying to destroy him. They've published actual fake news as true (sure, they usually apologize, but not until after their lies become conventional wisdom). They smear him with rumor. They smear him hypocritically. They publish things against his family they would NEVER had allowed against Obama. And even when they haven't flat out lied they've used such a vile spin that they've certainly fed the derangement syndrome with which so many on the left and in the MSM (and a few on the right) are beset.

As an aside, this is so typical of liberals. They come up with these horrific ideas to destroy their enemies and then squeal like stuck pigs when the ideas get turned against them. It's funny how the Independent Counsel law, vote rigging in California, speech codes, fake news and the such are all fine and dandy and noble until they snare liberals. "No one could have seen this coming! Somebody needs to do something! This wasn't what we intended!"

Ha ha.

25 comments:

Critch said...

An article in our paper today noted that there is not a single Democrat running for any city or county offices this fall, not one...first time in our history...there is one Dim running for state rep,,,but he's a whiny little lawyer who could piss off an empty room. Even the liberal media can't save the Democratic Party. There's only a handful of Dems running for office between here and the Mississippi River..that used to be their stronghold over there....

Tennessee Jed said...

curiously, I went to Google's search engine. Pretty much 3 or 4 pages were all "Trump's claim to have invented the term is a lie". To me, the issue is simple. Sure, there are "alien abducts pope" fake news. or there is fake news by ommision or only examining one side of an issue. There is no question 50 years ago, there were three television networks, newspapers, and weekly news magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. There was no question that like now, about 92% of folks reporting the "news" voted Democratic Party. They held a total monopoly, and because of that (probably plus some journalistic integrity) their bias was kept subtle. With the rise of political talk radio, Fox News Network, and the internet, there became a viable alternative. The other major factor, in my view, was the increasing need to generate revenue through sponsors and a dvertisers. What that meant is news sources became interested in getting it first, and also gradually sensationalizi ng their stories. Lastly, the wall between reporting facts and editorializing has come down and reporters use so-called "analysis". There is no question in my mind the left desires total domination of education and news. There is no question Trump deals with a hostile and totally one sided press corp. He is probably the first president to call them out and fight back in kind in the true New York brawler style. Whether this has helped him or hurt him on a net basis is a question open to discussion

Critch said...

Aliens took the Pope? Well, that explains a lot...

tryanmax said...

"He could piss off an empty room."
☝️
I'm stealing this.

tryanmax said...

Not only has the media tried to destroy Trump, the number of “what if” assassination op-eds has gone through the roof. This is a direct reversal on the media’s part in two ways.

First, if you recall August before the election, Trump made a comment about Second Amendment people preventing Hillary Clinton from picking Supreme Court judges. The media lit up with the phrase “stochastic terrorism,” meaning language intended to incite random acts of violence. They depicted the remark as an explicit dog-whistle (let that concept sink in) calling to assassinate Clinton. But when it comes to placing crosshairs—a symbol used by Sara Palin’s PAC to highlight battleground districts and deemed by the press to have inspired the shooting at a Gabby Giffords rally—over Trump’s image, the media shows no concern about sending the wrong message.

Second, during the Obama administration, the press expressed near constant concern for the safety of the president. While this isn’t necessarily undue—there were three credible attempts on Obama’s life, one foreign, two domestic—the press reported on no fewer than 16 specific incidents as though they were credible in addition to a steady flow of articles declaring Obama to be the most threatened president ever—an assertion that, if it was true then, probably isn’t anymore. Moreover, the press currently seems less concerned with the president’s safety than eager to report its compromise.

AndrewPrice said...

He could piss off an empty room. I love that! LOL!

AndrewPrice said...

Jed, I agree. I think the media has always been biased, but did a better job of hiding it in the past, or even suppressing it. Over the years though, as the public drifted back to the right under Reagan, the media started to really let their bias out because they felt their influence slipping. This snowballed and, by now, they're seething political hacks. And Trump is the first president to really call them on that.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, True. They routinely attacked anything that sounded the least bit violent or used potentially violent imagery. Now they're spewing violent imagery and posting things like, as you say, comments suggesting assassination or execution.

But now that it's happening to them, they are suddenly concerned again about the tone of the debate. To bad, Pandora, you opened the box and now the monster you created is going to eat you.

Anonymous said...

Several things: First,Critch, He could piss off an empty room. Quote of the month, candidate for quote of the year. Andrew, seeing the once mighty New York Times, The Old Grey Lady and most laughably the former "Paper of Record" beg for mercy is sweet. I savor this. This is what victory feels like. This is every bit as wonderful as watching Dan Rather fall. And nobody can feel any synmpathy for them. They pulled out every slur, tried every dirty trick and pulled out every stop to crush Trump and now they beg for quarter. None given bitches! And last but certainly not least, where's Bev? I've missed her.
GypsyTyger

Anthony said...

A) The fact that like his brother from another mother Bill Clinton Trump's supporters tend to both rally around him and shoot the messenger isn't surprising.

B) In an era of million of news outlets, people can and will chose news sources that tell them what they want to hear when they want to hear it. Hard news is more expensive and time consuming than rumor/speculation so if both get similar results, why waste time on hard news?

C) Point A doesn't really have much to do with Point B. Trump (and Obama's and Clinton's) charisma offered them a measure of protection from scandals but didn't really change the world for lesser politicians.

D) Giuliani calling Fox News to deny that Trump was present during a second campaign meeting with Russia that no one claimed happened was an amusing day in fake news. It must be tough to keep all the lies straight.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-hosts-baffled-by-giulianis-revelation-of-a-second-trump-meeting-didnt-quite-make-sense/

AndrewPrice said...

GypsyTyger, I agree... I am savoring this. For how long have these smug SOBs looked down on us and attacked our side? How long have they sought to destroy people like Reagan and any other conservative who raised their heads? This is beautiful. LOL!

Bev is taking care of family. I believe she'll be back at some point. At least, I hope so. I miss her insight as well.

AndrewPrice said...

I'm glad nothing ever surprises you, Anthony. LOL!

Anthony said...

Andrew,

I doubt I am a special snowflake. I suspect politics offers little surprise to most people and that most shock and outrage is feigned.

That would explain why despite lots of headlines with lots of exclamation points, very, very few things move the needle in terms of public opinion.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I'm not calling you a snowflake. What you are is a contrarian, perhaps the worst I've ever seen. You come here to argue with everything - me, other writers, people in the comments.

It doesn't matter what I say, you fight it. When you think you have an argument, you make it. That's fine. That's what blogging is about -- sharing viewpoints and chatting about it. And I'm happy to defend my articles against legitimate criticisms.

But when you can't think of an argument, you spin my points into strawmen that I never said and you attack your own spin, or you wander off on some bizarre tangent and start arguing semantics to try to get away from the point I made. And when you can't figure out a way to do that, you just dismiss whatever it is as something everyone supposedly knows or isn't relevant. That's sour grapes.

That's why I don't respond to most of your comments anymore. I'm not going to defend something I never said. I'm not going to split hairs whether the sky is blue or azure. I'm not going down some rabbit hole of semantics. I'm not going to argue with you about whether some observation is relevant or not. And I'm not going to play the rope-a-dope game of providing you with links to evidence only to have you nitpick the semantics.

You're a smart guy and have a lot to contribute, but the contrarian thing is deeply annoying and buries whatever you have to contribute.

tryanmax said...

The media, eager to prove that it isn't being led around by the nose, is going all in on panels, round-tables, and discussions to talk about how they aren't being led around by the nose.

On one show I heard (I can't keep them straight), a caller tried to illustrate media bias by explaining the different news ecosystems to the hosts. He pointed out that Breitbart and Zero Hedge gave Trump much better chances at winning than did most of the mainstream press. The hosts immediately hand-waved that away saying they just couldn't imagine a pollster intentionally letting their bias get in the way. No pause to even think about they were saying.

Another had a guest stating that the constant frustration she hears from conservatives for years is not that the news is untrue, but that events are cast in a very negative light when a Republican politician is the focus and vise-versa for Democrats. The immediate response from the other participants (and the host, I believe) was to reaffirm that Trump is, as a matter of fact, just—the worst.

Another commentator went on a tear about how the left-wing news and right-wing news don’t even cover the same stories and how divisive and dangerous it is. Really? I’ll keep that in mind the next time I find myself with folks who are sports junkies but who don’t follow movies. I’d hate to incite anything.

Still another discussion had a panelist offer up that, perhaps one source of frustration with the media is its present tendency to focus on Trump to the negligence of all other stories. She cited a recent event wherein a federal agency was stripped of some authority that failed to garner much attention. Again, the rest of the panel hand-waved this away, saying that when the president lies or speaks in a certain way, that IS news that they must report on.

But they're not being led around by the nose.

AndrewPrice said...

tryanmax, I think some journalists don't get how biased they are. You run into this a lot, especially with true believers, who think that their views are TRUTH and thus repeating them is to simply repeat the truth. If you accept that, then being nasty to people who don't accept the truth doesn't seem like bias, it seems like you're just pointing out idiocy or maliciousness. Think of it like the way people treat people who claim the earth is flat.

Then you compound this by them living in a bubble with people who all share the same view and it's easy to see why they can't see the bias.

Others though (remember the Journ-o-list?) know they are pushing leftist views and that they are intentionally shading/spinning events.

In terms of the bias, I see it as (1) not reporting things they don't agree with or over-reporting things they want you to believe, and (2) the heavy negative/positive spin they include depending on which side it effects. The most obvious examples are the hypocrisy, which they always dismiss with "that's different."

Unknown said...

Lol! That was hilarious,
Critch!

Unknown said...

Irt bias, good points!
It seems to me that extemists (certainly this exists on the right as well, but they aren’t as numerous as those that are on the left) view their idiotology as a religion. For some it IS their religion.

This explains why they get all frothy when someone commits a “heresy” and makes it easy in their minds to demonize different points of views.

Unknown said...

Bill Whittle wrote a fantastic essay on tribalism years ago that also explains a lot of this illogical behavior and biases.

AndrewPrice said...

Allena, I think the extremists on the right are a much, much smaller percentage of the right than those on the left. I've always estimated the extreme right to be about 6% of the public. The MSM, however, makes them out to be this massive group because they want the left scared of the right. Nothing bears that out, however.

At the same time, the left is formed differently because of their groupthink. How big their actual extreme is, I have no idea and no way to judge. But the overwhelming majority of the left subscribes to the views of their extreme, even as they claim to be "moderates" and "independent thinkers." So the extreme left is probably close to about 25-30% of the public, even if most of those think they are moderates.

AndrewPrice said...

Let me add, I think this goes back to the right periodically purging itself and repudiating its extreme elements, whereas the left never does that. Then you add a media that paints everyone on the right with a very nasty brush that people on the right want to refute, whereas they dismiss the crazies on the left as being a handful of individuals. This gives people on the right the desire to separate themselves from their crazies, but makes it easy for people on the left to never examine the worthiness of their own views.

Anonymous said...

I was over at FrontPage Magazine earlier today and I saw this in an article by Daniel Greenfield. it reminded me what we've been talking about in this thread. "The Left created a monster. And it thinks that it's riding the monster. But you don't control monsters. That's what makes them monsters."
That's pretty good.
GypsyTyger

AndrewPrice said...

GypsyTyger, That is the perfect description of the history of the left. Consider this...

1. The Nazis. A socialist movement aimed at destroying its enemies ends up rounding up traitors and disloyal Nazis by the end.

2. The Soviets. Repeated purges end up wiping out the most loyal communists. Ditto the Chinese.

3. Leftist ideas like the special counsel law end up being used against them. They created an activist Supreme Court and are now freaking out about the institution. The imperial Presidency. The War Powers Act. The Department of Education. Attacking states rights. All are liberal ideas that blew up on them when conservatives started using them.

4. Speech codes snare liberal professors.

5. Each generation of the politically correct inevitably declares the prior heretics and racists and tries to purge them from history.

6. Body cams meant to control cops exposed the lie that is minority oppression.

7. The MeToo movement destroyed liberal men with star chamber justice, and now that they're fed up, it is starting to boomerang back against liberal females.

8. The hate they unleashed against GW Bush triggered conservatives to resist Obama. Their hate against Trump is giving him a free hand to be conservative and the blowback from their actions is the only reason Trump might win re-election.

9. Their attempt to gerrymander black districts made blacks politically irrelevant.

10. Their courting of the crazies has led to the rise of the crazies in their party.

It goes on and on like that. Liberals act without thinking of the long-term reactions that will arise. But what sounds like the easiest solution is usually the one that will bite you in the ass when the time comes.

Anthony said...

Andrew,

The snowflake quip was a joke. That being said when you feel a post isn't worthy of response not responding is eminently reasonable.

However I take issue with your claim I shift positions to be contrary. I've made the same exact points about the media and Trump many times over the years. If you disagree with them fine but don't kid yourself that I advance them to get your goat.

I concede that my agreements tend to be short and my disagreements long (if I agree with someone there is no need to research the subject and provide citations) but I agree only a little less often than I disagree.

I've seen you sometimes advance arguments not supported by your links (nods towards the recent Uber thread). From where I stand pointing out those discrepancies isn't an insult, it's a mark of respect. Reading an argument and skimming the supporting evidence rather than just reacting to the headline and throwing out an unsupported repudiation. *Shrugs" Clearly you don't see it that way.

AndrewPrice said...

Anthony, I take issue with your claim I shift positions to be contrary.

I didn't say this and it's not my point. My point isn't that you change your positions, you don't. My point is that to argue with the things I say, you shift MY positions, or you just go off on a tangent I didn't even deal with and attack that.

I agree only a little less often than I disagree.

I honestly can't think of more than a couple times you've ever agreed... with anyone. Usually, the best an agreement gets is a dismissal as an irrelevant point.

If you don't see this, that's fine, but it's true.

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