21 Republicans voted not to award gold medals to the officers who protected them as they cowered in fear from the rioters. At the same time they've been pushing this Babbitt martyrdom to transform insurrectionists into milquetoast heroes.
No living, breathing American should fall for this whitewashing bullshit. I can't fathom how we continue to operate as a Democracy when all the treason comes from a party authorized to spew its seditious conspiracies to media outlets unchecked.
This is another example of a major news organization sending an amateur anthropologist west of the Hudson to see what the peculiar natives really do, to tell us what are their strange customs and beliefs. Usually it was the NYTimes going to a diner in Illinois.
Both Sides is a bad framework, but is is especially bad when one side is full of crazy people. But they continue to try because the failure to do so would be to admit that they’ve been wrong about the Republican Party since at least the Reagan era. And when your job requires your insight, connections, and memory, 40+ years of being wrong kills your reputation if not your career.
Who is going to hire a pundit who never, not even once, got it right?
Indeed. CNN depicted Babbit almost as "Gidget somehow got caught up." Local media interviewed some of her pool service clients who fired her for unhinged racist rants and crazed vitriol.
The right co-opted Jesus, the flag, and now the word "patriot." The irony of "patriots" justifying their insurrection as defending the Constitution seems to escape the media, which "forgets" to mention that Babbitt and her fellow travelers were trying to stop the constitutionally mandated electoral vote certification. What unites these "patriots" and the Former Guy is an astounding level of ignorance.
I particularly resent the co-opting of the American flag, or more precisely the desecration of the American flag. I no longer wear any clothing that has red, white, and blue or a flag on it for fear someone might think I'm one of them! I don't hang the flag out on holidays for the same reason, and I wonder about my neighbors who do. I do wear my Ruth Bader Ginsburg t-shirt when I'm out walking at the park, but I can barely hear the whispered "I like your shirt" of the intimidated few who comment as they pass. It's a sorry state of affairs...
I have a small American flag decal displayed on the back bumper of my car along side the BLM logo and the equality logo, plus a Biden/Harris campaign sticker. No one is separating me from the flag not my huge support for BLM. How is that a contradiction?
And The Washington Post chimed in today with a similar piece about a couple who lost their jobs because they were doxxed after the husband attacked a protester and he participated in the coup attempt.
And par for the course the Post cries crocodile tears for the man who decided to participate in the coup and he and his wife can't get hired. Oh and the Post expects them to become further radicalized...
Some media have described a great many of the insurrectionists as perpetrators of domestic violence; in bad straits financially; ‘deplorables’ who would make great case studies in sociological terms, not on CNN as a sympathetic ode to sedition and to the participants like this young woman. What is the purpose of NORMALIZING these angry adults who behave like mobsters? CNN comes off looking like a cheap date.
I don't know what Babbitt was thinking at that moment. I guess she was amped up and living inside of her own dreamworld where she's a freedom fighter storming the enemy. Oh well. For me it's like someone who was doing backflips at the edge of a cliff before they fell. Tough luck.
The piece with its absence of interviews from battered police officers is simply disgusting. With this both sides are to blame coverage, the media is playing an unprecedented role in eroding our democracy. The single shot that killed Babbitt may have been the difference between life and death for members of congress. Had Babbitt and others breached that door they were storming inside the Capitol, there is no telling of how things would have escalated afterwards. It's not hyperbole to say that her death may have been the difference between the US healing our reputation around the world today or being ruled under a Trump dictatorship as many potential what-if scenarios have showed. Not all of the insurrectionists were zealot lunatics (of course many of them were) but that does not excuse those folks who allowed themselves to stray down such a dark path. The lack of critically thinking people in this country has become its own pandemic and with the help of the press we are suffering because of it.
agreed. i didn't have space in my piece but, what exactly did people think would happen if those doors had been breached by the mob outside the Speaker's office?
I don’t think being white would be a protection for anyone protesting against the police or a right winger like Trump — or Nixon. Back in the 70s a housemate of mine, a white woman who grew up in suburban America, was imprisoned along with over 12,000 others overnight in RFK stadium for the crime of crossing the street on her way to an exam on the day of the 1971 May Day protests. She was nowhere near any destruction or violence, but she was a college kid, presumably liberal. She couldn’t contact us so we spent the night frantically trying to find her. By the time she got home she was a wreck mentally. Other white friends of mine, male and female, were tear gassed that day just because they were on campus.
I am sick to death of the media wringing their hands over the feelings of all those democracy-hating right wingers. That same media had no concern about the feelings of all us Democrats who have watched our much better candidates lose to incompetent men like Bush and Trump. And I don’t remember the media worrying about the hurt feelings of all the young people, white and black, who protested Nixon and his warmongering. Only authoritarian lovers get the snowflake treatment.
It's journalism 101 to avoid the flaws you point out. One has to wonder if CNN agreed in advance to report favorably on Babbitt to get the interview, which would be revolting. Was America really clamoring to know about her life and how her family viewed her? She was warned that someone had a gun on the other side of the window, but wouldn't stop. Also, was it a "liberal perspective" that CNN failed to report? No, it was just the perspective of the situation, the bigger picture and how her presence and actions fit into it.
Both Sides journalism is never actually Both Sides. In practice, it’s only about these sympathetic portraits of America-hating right-wingers, or a desperate attempt to manufacture a false equivalence to a conservative misdeed.
To quote a famous past FLOTUS: "I really don't care, do you?" that Babbitt is now deceased. Same goes for every single person who refuses to be vaccinated for idiotic reasons...let's see CNN (or the NYT) take a few of those people to a diner and have a chat and report back to us. MSM are MORONS.
It's been there ever since it started. Still remember the first day CNN was on the air and they sensationalized the shooting of Vernon Jordan playing up the angle that he was sharing a hotel room with a white woman.
I am sickened by this, but then again, it was bound to happen. Babbit's the Martyr of the MAGAs. CNN had access to do an interview; nothing should have stopped them from interviewing the victims of that day and giving a truly accurate report. Unless they legally agreed to portray the sainted daughter sympathetically. That's not journalism.
15-year newspaper guy here: White people are completely blinded in this country. You can become a journalist without knowing about Tulsa. You can become a journalist without knowing a single damn thing about Black people, history or culture. Like I did.
A not-insignificant number of educated White journalists are partial to the myth that White people only fail because they were failed. An alarming number also seem to believe the opposite about people of color.
Because, for the most part, newsrooms are white. We aren't forced to confront race in America. Here we are, in 2021, dispatching the same stereotypes you could find in 1840.
A powerful Black editor could have stopped this BS, and probably would have if he exists. I'm guessing he doesn't exist at CNN. That is the problem.
21 Republicans voted not to award gold medals to the officers who protected them as they cowered in fear from the rioters. At the same time they've been pushing this Babbitt martyrdom to transform insurrectionists into milquetoast heroes.
No living, breathing American should fall for this whitewashing bullshit. I can't fathom how we continue to operate as a Democracy when all the treason comes from a party authorized to spew its seditious conspiracies to media outlets unchecked.
oh yes, good call re: the 21 GOP's who refused to honor Capitol police
At least good ole Ron Johnson got booed at an event over the weekend.
This is another example of a major news organization sending an amateur anthropologist west of the Hudson to see what the peculiar natives really do, to tell us what are their strange customs and beliefs. Usually it was the NYTimes going to a diner in Illinois.
Both Sides is a bad framework, but is is especially bad when one side is full of crazy people. But they continue to try because the failure to do so would be to admit that they’ve been wrong about the Republican Party since at least the Reagan era. And when your job requires your insight, connections, and memory, 40+ years of being wrong kills your reputation if not your career.
Who is going to hire a pundit who never, not even once, got it right?
so true abt trying to Both Sides the crazies. i.e. Babbitt was clearly full-on QAnon
Indeed. CNN depicted Babbit almost as "Gidget somehow got caught up." Local media interviewed some of her pool service clients who fired her for unhinged racist rants and crazed vitriol.
Is there an institutional “don’t speak ill of the dead” in journalism?
I really don’t understand how the easily discernible facts could be left out to make something closer to a eulogy than a biography.
The irony is the pundits who are wrong time after time are not only still employed they're sometimes elevated with media gigs, book deals, etc.
hahaha Kevin, I just wrote about the diner analogy above. So true.
The right co-opted Jesus, the flag, and now the word "patriot." The irony of "patriots" justifying their insurrection as defending the Constitution seems to escape the media, which "forgets" to mention that Babbitt and her fellow travelers were trying to stop the constitutionally mandated electoral vote certification. What unites these "patriots" and the Former Guy is an astounding level of ignorance.
def Alice in Wonderland when "patriots" gets attached to someone who was part of mob that beat on cops defending US Capitol for five hours
Yes and now folks like Ron Johnson and Paul Gosar spread the BS that it was the FBI who incited the coup attempt...
I particularly resent the co-opting of the American flag, or more precisely the desecration of the American flag. I no longer wear any clothing that has red, white, and blue or a flag on it for fear someone might think I'm one of them! I don't hang the flag out on holidays for the same reason, and I wonder about my neighbors who do. I do wear my Ruth Bader Ginsburg t-shirt when I'm out walking at the park, but I can barely hear the whispered "I like your shirt" of the intimidated few who comment as they pass. It's a sorry state of affairs...
I have a small American flag decal displayed on the back bumper of my car along side the BLM logo and the equality logo, plus a Biden/Harris campaign sticker. No one is separating me from the flag not my huge support for BLM. How is that a contradiction?
I think your combination of stickers makes plain your convictions. Good for you.
And The Washington Post chimed in today with a similar piece about a couple who lost their jobs because they were doxxed after the husband attacked a protester and he participated in the coup attempt.
And par for the course the Post cries crocodile tears for the man who decided to participate in the coup and he and his wife can't get hired. Oh and the Post expects them to become further radicalized...
Some media have described a great many of the insurrectionists as perpetrators of domestic violence; in bad straits financially; ‘deplorables’ who would make great case studies in sociological terms, not on CNN as a sympathetic ode to sedition and to the participants like this young woman. What is the purpose of NORMALIZING these angry adults who behave like mobsters? CNN comes off looking like a cheap date.
hard to imagine this kind of sympathetic coverage if the accused were not white
Sad but true ....
I don't know what Babbitt was thinking at that moment. I guess she was amped up and living inside of her own dreamworld where she's a freedom fighter storming the enemy. Oh well. For me it's like someone who was doing backflips at the edge of a cliff before they fell. Tough luck.
The piece with its absence of interviews from battered police officers is simply disgusting. With this both sides are to blame coverage, the media is playing an unprecedented role in eroding our democracy. The single shot that killed Babbitt may have been the difference between life and death for members of congress. Had Babbitt and others breached that door they were storming inside the Capitol, there is no telling of how things would have escalated afterwards. It's not hyperbole to say that her death may have been the difference between the US healing our reputation around the world today or being ruled under a Trump dictatorship as many potential what-if scenarios have showed. Not all of the insurrectionists were zealot lunatics (of course many of them were) but that does not excuse those folks who allowed themselves to stray down such a dark path. The lack of critically thinking people in this country has become its own pandemic and with the help of the press we are suffering because of it.
agreed. i didn't have space in my piece but, what exactly did people think would happen if those doors had been breached by the mob outside the Speaker's office?
Democrats say more people in the Capitol could have died while Republicans claim the protesters would have experienced more Second Amendment freedoms.
Exactly. How about a story about those congressmen on the receiving end of that horrific incident w/Babbit?
I don’t think being white would be a protection for anyone protesting against the police or a right winger like Trump — or Nixon. Back in the 70s a housemate of mine, a white woman who grew up in suburban America, was imprisoned along with over 12,000 others overnight in RFK stadium for the crime of crossing the street on her way to an exam on the day of the 1971 May Day protests. She was nowhere near any destruction or violence, but she was a college kid, presumably liberal. She couldn’t contact us so we spent the night frantically trying to find her. By the time she got home she was a wreck mentally. Other white friends of mine, male and female, were tear gassed that day just because they were on campus.
I am sick to death of the media wringing their hands over the feelings of all those democracy-hating right wingers. That same media had no concern about the feelings of all us Democrats who have watched our much better candidates lose to incompetent men like Bush and Trump. And I don’t remember the media worrying about the hurt feelings of all the young people, white and black, who protested Nixon and his warmongering. Only authoritarian lovers get the snowflake treatment.
just an obsession to relay sympathy for insurrectionists.
Jake Tapper is one of the 5 1/2 journalists working at CNN, but even he slips, as we all do.
Now to the big questions:
1. Why does anyone consider CNN a news network?
2. Does anybody think any right-wingers, who regularly condemn CNN as liberal, ever watch it?
3. Why would anybody watch it?
It's journalism 101 to avoid the flaws you point out. One has to wonder if CNN agreed in advance to report favorably on Babbitt to get the interview, which would be revolting. Was America really clamoring to know about her life and how her family viewed her? She was warned that someone had a gun on the other side of the window, but wouldn't stop. Also, was it a "liberal perspective" that CNN failed to report? No, it was just the perspective of the situation, the bigger picture and how her presence and actions fit into it.
Looks like it's back to "It's great for ratings" again.
Both Sides journalism is never actually Both Sides. In practice, it’s only about these sympathetic portraits of America-hating right-wingers, or a desperate attempt to manufacture a false equivalence to a conservative misdeed.
press not comfortable with full-on sympathetic coverage of insurrectionists, so opts for Both Sides
To quote a famous past FLOTUS: "I really don't care, do you?" that Babbitt is now deceased. Same goes for every single person who refuses to be vaccinated for idiotic reasons...let's see CNN (or the NYT) take a few of those people to a diner and have a chat and report back to us. MSM are MORONS.
CNN has joined the 'cognitive dissidents'.
It's been there ever since it started. Still remember the first day CNN was on the air and they sensationalized the shooting of Vernon Jordan playing up the angle that he was sharing a hotel room with a white woman.
I am sickened by this, but then again, it was bound to happen. Babbit's the Martyr of the MAGAs. CNN had access to do an interview; nothing should have stopped them from interviewing the victims of that day and giving a truly accurate report. Unless they legally agreed to portray the sainted daughter sympathetically. That's not journalism.
totally agreed. it's like once CNN landed the Babbitt family interviews it stopped doing journalism
Poor or no journalistic there there. Interview or bust. Who is minding the CNN store?
15-year newspaper guy here: White people are completely blinded in this country. You can become a journalist without knowing about Tulsa. You can become a journalist without knowing a single damn thing about Black people, history or culture. Like I did.
A not-insignificant number of educated White journalists are partial to the myth that White people only fail because they were failed. An alarming number also seem to believe the opposite about people of color.
Because, for the most part, newsrooms are white. We aren't forced to confront race in America. Here we are, in 2021, dispatching the same stereotypes you could find in 1840.
A powerful Black editor could have stopped this BS, and probably would have if he exists. I'm guessing he doesn't exist at CNN. That is the problem.