- Joined
- Jun 18, 2018
- Messages
- 77,525
- Reaction score
- 81,324
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Progressive
"Donald Trump said violent crime was exploding across the U.S. It wasn't. He said Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were "eating the dogs. They're eating the cats." They weren't. He said the Federal Emergency Management Agency diverted disaster relief money to fund benefits for people in the country illegally. It hadn't. Trump lied incessantly and extravagantly in his bumptious bid for president, after racking up more than 30,500 false or misleading statements during four years in the White House, according to fact-checkers at the Washington Post.
Trump won anyway. Some voters might even have backed him because of his relentless falsehoods. Which raises several questions. Is honesty, as in telling the truth, no longer a requirement for seeking and holding public office? Has veracity become one of those quaint relics of a bygone era, like straw boaters and torchlight parades? Should candidates of any and every persuasion feel free to emulate Trump and lie their heads off? ... An NBC News survey, taken in mid-October, showed Democrat Kamala Harris holding a 10-point lead over Trump on the question of which candidate was viewed as honest and trustworthy. The findings were consistent with other polls conducted throughout the Trump era.
...Joe Trippi, who has spent decades managing Democratic campaigns from the local to presidential levels, said the party and its candidates can no longer count on conventional media — the three major broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, newspapers such as this one — or most social media to counter the lies and distortions billowing from Fox News, Elon Musk's execrable X or other assertively pro-Trump outlets.
Jane Kirtley is a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, who's spent years writing about those subjects. She said the erosion of truth-telling standards and the rise of what Kellyanne Conway, the Trump advisor, famously called "alternative facts" have been a long time coming. "The issue goes back decades in terms of lack of media literacy, lack of critical thinking, platforms that are now viewed by many as news delivery systems when they're little more than propaganda," Kirtley said.
Despite the challenges — shrinking audiences, political antagonism, a dire economic landscape — she said independent media must continue "to call out lies and call them lies, if that's what they are" and, whenever possible, refute them "with concrete evidence."
But she has no illusions. Kirtley has a relative, she said, who shuts down any familial fact-checking by stating, " 'I have other sources of information than you do.'" And that ends the discussion."
Link
No: It apparently takes an entertainer to carry it off and a village, a network of social media to go along with you and a political party of sycophants eager to amplify those lies.
Yes: with MSM in decline, these village will take their place.
Trump won anyway. Some voters might even have backed him because of his relentless falsehoods. Which raises several questions. Is honesty, as in telling the truth, no longer a requirement for seeking and holding public office? Has veracity become one of those quaint relics of a bygone era, like straw boaters and torchlight parades? Should candidates of any and every persuasion feel free to emulate Trump and lie their heads off? ... An NBC News survey, taken in mid-October, showed Democrat Kamala Harris holding a 10-point lead over Trump on the question of which candidate was viewed as honest and trustworthy. The findings were consistent with other polls conducted throughout the Trump era.
...Joe Trippi, who has spent decades managing Democratic campaigns from the local to presidential levels, said the party and its candidates can no longer count on conventional media — the three major broadcast networks, CNN, MSNBC, newspapers such as this one — or most social media to counter the lies and distortions billowing from Fox News, Elon Musk's execrable X or other assertively pro-Trump outlets.
Jane Kirtley is a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, who's spent years writing about those subjects. She said the erosion of truth-telling standards and the rise of what Kellyanne Conway, the Trump advisor, famously called "alternative facts" have been a long time coming. "The issue goes back decades in terms of lack of media literacy, lack of critical thinking, platforms that are now viewed by many as news delivery systems when they're little more than propaganda," Kirtley said.
Despite the challenges — shrinking audiences, political antagonism, a dire economic landscape — she said independent media must continue "to call out lies and call them lies, if that's what they are" and, whenever possible, refute them "with concrete evidence."
But she has no illusions. Kirtley has a relative, she said, who shuts down any familial fact-checking by stating, " 'I have other sources of information than you do.'" And that ends the discussion."
Link
No: It apparently takes an entertainer to carry it off and a village, a network of social media to go along with you and a political party of sycophants eager to amplify those lies.
Yes: with MSM in decline, these village will take their place.
