Is the press the Enemy of the People?

[Grandpappy]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Only the hard right media is

 

[Cameron]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

Conservative media is definitely an enemy of democracy. Everything the mainstream media said about Trump has proven true.

Not sure yet what we can do about this; very little due to the First Amendment, although I think just paying attention (which we were not doing for decades) helps.

 

[EdwinWillers]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

Depends on how (or who) you define as "the press."

In general though, no - the "press" is a good and necessary thing that helps protect our freedom via independent research, analysis, and editorial.

THAT said, it's equally obvious that "main stream" press entities are not independent at all, beholden to their owners, stockholders, and behind-the-scenes funding and lobbying - much like most of our representatives and senators in government.

They've made it absolutely critical and incumbent on the public to do their own research and analysis to form their own editorial opinions - always of course dependent on the sources people more powerful than they tend to control.

 

[Juggernaut74]

 

[Nickyjo]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

Why would anyone need to lie about Trump? That would be journalistic malpractice. He provided ample material, and dug his own political grave by years of fraud and huxterism, his “Make America Hate Again” rhetoric, followed by failure to lead on the pandemic. You don’t need a diploma from Trump University to understand that.

The only reasons we had to put up with him for four years was decades of Hillary-bashing and her sorry campaign.

 

[TurtleDude]

Only the hard right media is

the hard right media doesn't have the influence that the corporate leftist big government media does.

 

[Grandpappy]

Let's see. I only need 6 words to prove they're liars.

RUSSIA, RUSSIA , RUSSIA....LIE, LIE LIE. There are literally hundreds more.

 

[Roadvirus]

The press isn't the enemy. They are all just stupid liars.

 

[Yakshi]

So Grandpappy hates Nazis and thinks the press is the enemy. Good to know.

 

[Nickyjo]

the hard right media doesn't have the influence that the corporate leftist big government media does.

You can logically call our media corporate, but leftist? Really? When you regularly see stories on worker exploitation in sweatshops and food processing plants, our outsized prison population, terrible wealth and health care distribution compared to countries like us, how the number of bases we have around the world resembles previous empires, our history of overthrowing Latin American governments, maybe. Yes, they are progressive on social issues, reflecting the views of affluent middle class America, and woke up eventually on the foolishness that was Vietnam, but leftist? Hardly.

 

[TurtleDude]

You can logically call our media corporate, but leftist? Really? When you regularly see stories on worker exploitation in sweatshops and food processing plants, our outsized prison population, terrible wealth and health care distribution compared to countries like us, how the number of bases we have around the world resembles previous empires, our history of overthrowing Latin American governments, maybe. Yes, they are progressive on social issues, reflecting the views of affluent middle class America, and woke up eventually on the foolishness that was Vietnam, but leftist? Hardly.

the type of person that goes into national journalism tends to be urban and anti religious

 

[Grandpappy]

So Grandpappy hates Nazis and thinks the press is the enemy. Good to know.

I assume you believe every word they say. As long as it's not Fox, right?

 

[Nickyjo]

Let's see. I only need 6 words to prove they're liars.

RUSSIA, RUSSIA , RUSSIA....LIE, LIE LIE. There are literally hundreds more.

Yes, they should have reported more on Trump’s outrage at Russia’s election interference, his grave concern about Russia’s occupying Ukraine, his steadfast support of those abused or killed by Putin. They dropped the ball.

 

[eohrnberger]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

Given:

• Politically Biased Media:
  It’s the kind of thing Republicans have to deal with every step of the way too, from Kristi Noem and the massive deadly factory outbreak that never happened to Ron DeSantis and the vaccine corruption that also never happened.
  Behind The Curtain: How The New York Times Manufactures Lies For Democrats To Attack Their Opponents
  These kinds of things aren't one-offs, they're how corporate media and the Democratic Party work in tandem to defeat their conservative opponents.
  By Christopher Bedford, May 12, 2021
  https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/1...lies-for-democrats-to-attack-their-opponents/
• The Media Is Creating a False Perception of Rising Racism. My New Study Proves It
  ERIC KAUFMANN , PROFESSOR OF POLITICS, BIRKBECK COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON
  ON 4/13/21
  https://www.newsweek.com/media-crea...racism-my-new-study-proves-it-opinion-1583264
• How Do Big Media Outlets So Often "Independently Confirm" Each Other's Falsehoods?
  The Washington Post's media-spread error about Trump's Georgia call shows the deceitful playbook first invented to undermine Trump and promote Russiagate.
  Glenn Greenwald,
  https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-do-big-media-outlets-so-often
• Bombshell Correction Sums Up the Political Media’s Corruption
  As long as liberal subscribers value partisan porn over accuracy, this woeful trend won’t change.
  By DAVID HARSANYI,March 16, 2021
  https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/bombshell-correction-sums-up-the-political-medias-corruption/
• New York Times quietly updates story that spread now-debunked claim about police officer Brian Sicknick’s death
  https://newsla.localad.com/2021/02/...m-about-police-officer-brian-sicknicks-death/
• Trump Supporters Are ‘Enemies Of The State’ According To New York Times Reporter
  By Ben Johnson • Jul 29, 2021
  https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-supporters-are-enemies-of-the-state-according-to-new-york-times-reporter

Hard to imagine friends 'of the people' doing these things. 'With friends like these . . .'

 

[Mithrae]

To this day, I'm not sure why...

They're providing a service. That's the free market for you. Some folk like to consume media with a far-right bias (hence Fox, OAN etc.), others like to consume media with a centre-right bias (hence MSNBC, CNN etc.), and while they're less popular obviously some prefer centre-left (eg. Guardian) or far-left (World Socialist Web Site) biases too. Fortunately these various biases - at least until fairly recently - mostly affected story selection and spin rather than the actual hard facts reported, because irrespective of biases most folk still preferred to consume media whose information (however skewed in selection and presentation) was at its core accurate.

Seems like that's changing though, because of what is often broadly called the 'echo chamber' effect; folk with one political leaning or another looking for journalism that's "hard-hitting" or "asking the tough questions" from a similar political bias will obviously tend to have those views reinforced, which means that to the consumer that source will eventually seem rather benign. Media sources whose business model explicitly caters towards a particular political bias (which obviously is not all of them, nor even a majority, at least not explicitly) over time will necessarily have to sharpen the biases in their coverage even moreso to keep up with the worldviews they're reinforcing in their consumer base... or risk losing ground to 'harder-hitting' competitors who will cater to that demand. The obvious example here is Fox losing ground to the likes of Newsmax and OAN, particularly after Fox committed the unpardonable sin of calling the 2020 election in favour of Biden. Furthermore the self-reinforcing nature of an 'echo chamber' seems especially pronounced in the era of smartphones and social media, in which (even moreso than in the past) sensationalism gets far more page clicks and reaches far more people than more level reporting. By their very nature of course, these problems would seem likely to be most pronounced for media sources outside the mainstream, furthest from the centre; it's hard to imagine what centrist sensationalism or a hard-hitting centrist bias would look like

 

[Jay59]

Only the hard right media is

So, about 5%, maybe less.

BTW Don't pretend FOX is hard right.

Conservative media is definitely an enemy of democracy.

Another 5%er.

Everything the mainstream media said about Trump has proven true.

This could not be less true. Russia collusion was the main story for three years before it was proven false.

Not sure yet what we can do about this; very little due to the First Amendment, although I think just paying attention (which we were not doing for decades) helps.

You could start by holding MSM accountable.

Why would anyone need to lie about Trump?

That's a good question, because they lied a lot, as in more than he did. Russia collusion was the most common lie, but there were many others.

That would be journalistic malpractice.

that does not seem to have been a problem.

He provided ample material, and dug his own political grave by years of fraud and huxterism

Which begs the question, why do you have to lie about Trump? I could give you huxterism, but there was zero fraud. That was all lies by the media or by the Democrats and repeated by the media.

his “Make America Hate Again” rhetoric,

I never understood why this was controversial.

followed by failure to lead on the pandemic.

Another lie. You are on a roll.

You don’t need a diploma from Trump University to understand that.

The diploma would be from the media cult.

The only reasons we had to put up with him for four years was decades of Hillary-bashing and her sorry campaign.

The fact that he was a good President has something to do with it.

The press isn't the enemy. They are all just stupid liars.

Including you?

 

[Grandpappy]

Yes, they should have reported more on Trump’s outrage at Russia’s election interference, his grave concern about Russia’s occupying Ukraine, his steadfast support of those abused or killed by Putin. They dropped the ball.

It was all fake, man. 3 and a half years of fake. Untrue. Didn't happen. And there's good evidence they knew that when they started. Lies. Lies. Lies.

 

[Slartibartfast]

the hard right media doesn't have the influence that the corporate leftist big government media does.

Then that is good for America.

 

[RaleBulgarian]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

It is already being studied. Google “studies Trump post truth America”.

 

[Mycroft]

I say yes. Their lies and distortions gave us the current administration. To this day, I'm not sure why they lied about Trump to the extent they did. Was it retaliation because their constant focus on him actually made him POTUS?
Was it outside orders from the DNC? There is some evidence of that.
Was it simply the fact that their communist journalism professor's dogma steered their bias?
I'll never forget ABC's Martha Radditz sitting in a corner and crying when Hillary lost. Or the forlorn faces of the CNN clown crew on election night 2016.
After all the partisan insanity subsides, this will be studied, I'm sure.

The press is the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and the Trump haters.

So no, they are not the "enemy of the people". They are just the enemy of the people who are not Democrats or Trump haters.

 

[RaleBulgarian]

the hard right media doesn't have the influence that the corporate leftist big government media does.

Now that’s some silly bull shit.

 

[TurtleDude]

Then that is good for America.

maybe the socialist left America-not the side that made America great. Much of the press realizes that it has more power if we have a more conformity and more centralization. People who go into the press tend to be control freaks who are intolerant of the religious or those who are skeptical of the urban-elitist mindset. I recall 41 years ago (September 1980) when the four seniors in my college suite were discussing what we planned to do after college. Two of us were applying to law schools, one to medical school-the fourth-a chess master majoring in computers was trying to decide if he was going to pursue computer science or play poker professionally (he was world class). The pre med guy was noting that lawyers were arrogant because they could control the liberty and property of others, and we countered noting that doctors were worse since they thought they had the power of life and death. and the chess master just laughed and said-You all have nothing on the press-those assholes think they can tell you how to think.

He was right

 

[RaleBulgarian]

The press is the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party and the Trump haters.

So no, they are not the "enemy of the people". They are just the enemy of the people who are not Democrats or Trump haters.

Reminder; “The press” includes Breitbart, Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, The Heritage, Epoch Times, etc., etc, …

 

[Hari Seldon]

the hard right media doesn't have the influence that the corporate leftist big government media does.

Faux News, OAN, NewsMaxx have plenty of influence unfortunately. I have to disagree. Then there are the churches. Quite a bit of influence there (mostly right) in spite of the IRS regs.