Don't forget that during Obama's 2 terms the Republicans lied relentlessly (and effectively to their supporters) about the economy being in shsmbles and I don't recall that they were ever challenged. I remember Graham & McCain being on tv criticizing what the described as a dangerous foreign policy decision as well as directly claiming that Obama ruined our economy, with no pushback from the press.
I am glad that you made it clear that this didn’t start with Trump. For decades the mainstream “liberal” media has refused to say that Republicans are lying to us. I believe it was Paul Krugman who said they started down the path to their alternate reality when Reagan started pushing that crackpot supply-side economic snake oil with its magical cost-free tax cuts. It was over 20 years before I saw anyone in the media debunk that costly fairytale and that WaPo article didn’t even mention Reagan. The media still holds him up as some kind of economic genius.
It was Karl Rove who is believed to have told Ron Suskind that Republicans create their own realities. It’s not like they have been subtle about this so why is the media so reluctant to say they are deliberately lying to us? Of course after all these years it appears that a lot of Republican leaders, especially the younger Tea Party types truly believe those lies.
What's so frightening about this careless reporting by the AP and others is what it does to the percentage of the population that doesn't consume political coverage 24/7. This "both sides do it" nonsense gives the uninformed permission to vote Republican, not considering the consequences if they truly believe that both sides are offering two versions of reality. Much of the press is attempting to normalize the absurd, making Trump just out to be different, not bat shit crazy. These are indeed scary times and the press, in this case the AP acting as Fox News Lite, is simply not doing its job. The more we move forward to Election Day, the more I feel the deck is being stacked against those who want Trump and the Republicans out. The constant lies and deception from Trump, the voter suppression, the dismantling of the Post Office, and of course the press not doing their homework is leaving the serious changes needed in DC up to us, the people. Hopefully folks are paying attention. We must vote for change in such huge numbers, the results simply can't be questioned.
Some Bush apparatchik state’s in the early 2000s that they take a fiction and say it’s reality. (This is referenced in a book by Ron Suskind (so.).)
Meanwhile, the establishment DC press corps has, as a rule, been all in supporting the GOP since Reagan. The big tell there is their theme that a Democrat can do nothing good, a Republican nothing wrong; this is the rule although, obviously, there is the rare exception. A lovely example is Clinton’s emails. She did nothing much different from what her Republican predecessors did. Indeed, what Clinton did was less bad than what Rice and Powell did. They used public services, Clinton used a private server which, being private, maybe would have been harder to find and hack than AOL.
Too, the media has believed for decades that being Trump’s echo chamber was good for the bottom line. You’d think (hope?) that his being POTUS would change that but you would be wrong. Donnie’s a documented killer of at least tens of thousands of Americans; call him a killer. He’s a racist fomenting violence. It’s documented; he should be called as that because, again, documented facts.
Of course, if he was a Democrat, he would be. But no, being a Republican and an attraction for the audience prevents that.
So we get the DC press corps’ fake reality. If we’re lucky, we get facts with woefully insufficient follow through. But we tend to get White House cowards anonymously leaking to Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan et al. We get a huge amount of shit.
Somewhere, I suspect that Frank Bruni is telling Ron Fournier that he did nothing wrong ....
I understand that the AP, serving such a variety of publications and readers, may need to be even more concerned about that infamous bitch goddess, objectivity, than other outlets. But I'm reminded of Edward R. Murrow suggesting that some of his bosses would have given equal time to Judas if he had been reporting on Jesus.
I can’t even read the AP piece, I’m so sick of all that stuff from hacks like that. Why they do it, what the motivation is, I don’t even give a shit. But, I do hope if there is a big election sweep, these people aren’t forgotten ! As for Gillian Welch, I have always found her voice really interesting and singularly identifiable. Though completely different in style, I’ve always thought of her like I think of Lucinda Williams, Roseanne Cash and Emmylou Harris
By definition there cannot be two realities; there is one reality and one misperception. As you note, the AP was once the vanguard of semantic purity but its Trump coverage torpedoed this once-vaunted principle. Hope our democracy survives; as always, these lapses needed to be repeatedly highlighted.
Don't forget that during Obama's 2 terms the Republicans lied relentlessly (and effectively to their supporters) about the economy being in shsmbles and I don't recall that they were ever challenged. I remember Graham & McCain being on tv criticizing what the described as a dangerous foreign policy decision as well as directly claiming that Obama ruined our economy, with no pushback from the press.
I am glad that you made it clear that this didn’t start with Trump. For decades the mainstream “liberal” media has refused to say that Republicans are lying to us. I believe it was Paul Krugman who said they started down the path to their alternate reality when Reagan started pushing that crackpot supply-side economic snake oil with its magical cost-free tax cuts. It was over 20 years before I saw anyone in the media debunk that costly fairytale and that WaPo article didn’t even mention Reagan. The media still holds him up as some kind of economic genius.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113002190.html
It was Karl Rove who is believed to have told Ron Suskind that Republicans create their own realities. It’s not like they have been subtle about this so why is the media so reluctant to say they are deliberately lying to us? Of course after all these years it appears that a lot of Republican leaders, especially the younger Tea Party types truly believe those lies.
What's so frightening about this careless reporting by the AP and others is what it does to the percentage of the population that doesn't consume political coverage 24/7. This "both sides do it" nonsense gives the uninformed permission to vote Republican, not considering the consequences if they truly believe that both sides are offering two versions of reality. Much of the press is attempting to normalize the absurd, making Trump just out to be different, not bat shit crazy. These are indeed scary times and the press, in this case the AP acting as Fox News Lite, is simply not doing its job. The more we move forward to Election Day, the more I feel the deck is being stacked against those who want Trump and the Republicans out. The constant lies and deception from Trump, the voter suppression, the dismantling of the Post Office, and of course the press not doing their homework is leaving the serious changes needed in DC up to us, the people. Hopefully folks are paying attention. We must vote for change in such huge numbers, the results simply can't be questioned.
Some Bush apparatchik state’s in the early 2000s that they take a fiction and say it’s reality. (This is referenced in a book by Ron Suskind (so.).)
Meanwhile, the establishment DC press corps has, as a rule, been all in supporting the GOP since Reagan. The big tell there is their theme that a Democrat can do nothing good, a Republican nothing wrong; this is the rule although, obviously, there is the rare exception. A lovely example is Clinton’s emails. She did nothing much different from what her Republican predecessors did. Indeed, what Clinton did was less bad than what Rice and Powell did. They used public services, Clinton used a private server which, being private, maybe would have been harder to find and hack than AOL.
Too, the media has believed for decades that being Trump’s echo chamber was good for the bottom line. You’d think (hope?) that his being POTUS would change that but you would be wrong. Donnie’s a documented killer of at least tens of thousands of Americans; call him a killer. He’s a racist fomenting violence. It’s documented; he should be called as that because, again, documented facts.
Of course, if he was a Democrat, he would be. But no, being a Republican and an attraction for the audience prevents that.
So we get the DC press corps’ fake reality. If we’re lucky, we get facts with woefully insufficient follow through. But we tend to get White House cowards anonymously leaking to Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan et al. We get a huge amount of shit.
Somewhere, I suspect that Frank Bruni is telling Ron Fournier that he did nothing wrong ....
I understand that the AP, serving such a variety of publications and readers, may need to be even more concerned about that infamous bitch goddess, objectivity, than other outlets. But I'm reminded of Edward R. Murrow suggesting that some of his bosses would have given equal time to Judas if he had been reporting on Jesus.
I can’t even read the AP piece, I’m so sick of all that stuff from hacks like that. Why they do it, what the motivation is, I don’t even give a shit. But, I do hope if there is a big election sweep, these people aren’t forgotten ! As for Gillian Welch, I have always found her voice really interesting and singularly identifiable. Though completely different in style, I’ve always thought of her like I think of Lucinda Williams, Roseanne Cash and Emmylou Harris
By definition there cannot be two realities; there is one reality and one misperception. As you note, the AP was once the vanguard of semantic purity but its Trump coverage torpedoed this once-vaunted principle. Hope our democracy survives; as always, these lapses needed to be repeatedly highlighted.
You’d be a great guest on my radio show. Check out this interview with Joseph O’Neill, political writer for the New York Review of Books. https://soundcloud.com/user-615655720/left-of-center-radio-podcast-guest-joseph-oneill?ref=clipboard