The owners of news outlets and TV networks from my point of view are only in the news business not for telling the truth but for MONEY. The so called journalists who write and report what they now call the news are at fault for the state of what's wrong in our country. From the start they have given the gop a pass the American people know the truth even if the press doesn't tell the truth. The gop is set on destroying democracy and has been working on it for years. I have stopped looking at the news on TV because I'm always afraid I'll break the TV. I read about what's going on with a grain of salt. This newsletter and a few other newsletter are still upholding the truth. For that I thank you.
It isn’t just about the money. Reporters too often judge politicians the way they judge celebrities — how glamorous, entertaining, exciting, stylish they are. They want someone cool to hang with. Imagine how they would react if an American version of Angela Merkel tried to run for president. She would either be trashed as boring the way Gore was or ignored in favor of a more exciting candidate the way Hillary was.
In the recent Showtime documentary about Reagan Leslie Stahl “...describes the allure this first family had over the media as she recalls the first time he stepped into the White House briefing room to talk to the press. “We all kind of melted,” she says. “We were puddles on the floor.” “
Frank Bruni swooned over GW Bush because Bush gave him the nickname “Panchito”. In contrast he actually criticized Gore for not attending to those kinds of little details because Gore was too focused on serious issues.
They also falls hard for guys that are good at pretending to be manly men. Look at how they swooned over the chickenhawks Cheney and Bush but showed disdain for Gore and Kerry, both men who volunteered to serve in Vietnam. If we the people dare to elect a person from Hicksville you can bet they will treat that person with disdain. Jimmy Carter was repeatedly called a peanut farmer; even that supposed paragon of journalism Tim Russert constantly called Clinton “Bubba”.
Shortly before Chris Matthews was given the boot at MSNBC I heard him shut down a guest who was discussing the competence of a candidate, telling him “I’m in the business of finding heroes”.
None of that behavior can be explained by money but it can be explained if you understand the mentality of high school kids desperate to be a part of the in crowd. I find that even behavior more pathetic than journalists who are afraid to anger their corporate bosses.
She really is despicable and it is a reflection on the Ny Times that they have kept her on for all these years. Here are some of the things she said about Gore during the 2000 election:
"Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."
"Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating."
“I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction."
Not only are her comments beyond shallow and stupid, they are blatantly insulting to women. No way the Times would allow similarly racist comments to be published no matter how many clicks they would generate.
I agree with you if the so called journalists wanting be with the cool kids so I guess 45 was a cool kid to them. I mean he's good at name calling and giving names that are offensive. But hey they're still in the in crowd. Sad for the American people they want to be cool.
WhaTt do you think the percentage is, of "journalist' who actually attended journalism school? Most don't seem to have any affinity towards truth and honesty. There have been a couple over the years who appear to have come straight from their high school, college newspaper days. Maybe I am imagining it, but I question many of today's reporters vs. real journalists. No, FAUX, doesn't even come close. Those people are "faces for tv", nothing more.
Whether from high school or college everyone should know truth no matter what. That seems to be the case with so called journalists, forgotten truth. I often wonder how they look at themselves in the mirror and who and what do they see. Sad this is what America has become entertainment news for all.
But there is often a problem with journalists that doesn’t involve telling falsehoods although that also happens too much. Political journalists weren’t lying when they focused on the size of Trump’s crowds in 2016 but ignored the substance of Hillary’s campaign. Their he said/she said reporting is usually true. The reports Eric describes in this article are not literally false but they are still seriously misleading. The problem in a lot of cases is not false hoods but what reporter choose to report and what they choose to ignore.
No matter how you look at it in 2016 they didn't stand up for the people. They let a man talk about the size of his penis talking about the size of his hands and feet. The press tells the so called truth the way they want they are not falsehoods what we the people get are lies from liars. Whether journalists or politicians not falsehoods lies.
What McConnell wants is no liability for corporations. Add that to the bill and maybe something gets passed. That's another point the mainstream media just glosses over. I applaud the Democrats for standing up to this bullying. Can you imagine working conditions if the corporate masters know that they can force workers to produce during the pandemic under any circumstance? If no liability was added to the bill, workers would assuredly need the stimulus and a lot more because the likelihood of them getting sick would increase dramatically. The Republicans remain the devil in this scenario. The Dems have more than capitulated and it's infuriating to see the press whitewash the obstructing Republicans. But what do we really expect from a party that is more than willing to throw out the clear results of an election because they are so frightened of their leader?
The press does the usual thing when discussing the bill passed by Nancy Pelosi and the House - they laugh it off as some pie-in-the-sky dreaming by silly Democrats who always want too much.
"Why is that story so hard for the press to tell?"
You used to read that reporters ran their story by the subjects for comments before going to press/air. It seems that cowardice in the name of access is tolerable to their bosses. Facts accompanied by "declined to comment when given the opportunity" do not make the press the enemy of the people. Or, if you prefer, should not.
Judy Woodruff from PBS nightly news is another whiny both sides. God they make me sick ! I wouldn’t even think of watching the “traditional” MSM, but you can’t even escape it on the foreign news broadcasts.
My long-standing theory is that the L word for much of the media is not Liberal, but Lazy. I don't mean there aren't reporters who are hard-working and risk their lives, but they sure don't cover politics. The Laziness is this: It's easier to do They Said/They Said and Horse Race stories than do actual digging, which is what reporters are supposed to do. Dan Rather once said he hated the term "investigative reporter" because reporters were supposed to investigate. This is even true of good reports like the ones about, say, the Hobbesian war of "all against all" in the White House right now. The real story is that the people fighting with one another all agreed to be part of a treasonous conspiracy in the first place.
I'm sick and tired of the both sides-isms and double standards coming from the likes of the WSJ (really? Dr Jill Biden should drop the Dr because she hasn't delivered a baby?) and news anchors like Andrea Mitchell, who loves a good "Dems do it too," angle. As bad as Trump has been at literally everything, they still cling to normalizing his presidency at all costs. Sadly, too many Americans believe both sides are at fault for everything that ails us, and I blame the Complicit Media for this.
Plus. . . Dua Lipa sounds good on blast in my car when I just need to go for a drive to get out of the house!
Yeah WSJ dude was out of pocket and just dumb. Andrea Mitchell is on my nerves. I think it's time for her to hang it up because I think her memory is going. She's looking a bit slow on the TV. I'm still mad at her for even asking Hillary if she should apologize to the people over her "emails" that right there did it for me. Like WTF?!
Reading about how the Beltway reporters are not doing their job just gets my blood boiling. And all the blame that is constantly put on Pelosi is infuriating. The s*it is being passed in the House and yet the Senate doesn't move it forward so how is that Pelosi's fault?! It's not. I wish they would get a grip and actually do the honest reporting that the country needs and furthermore how they are supposed to do their jobs. I'm so pissed. Thank you again Eric for telling it like it is and hoping the press actually would!!
Eric, this piece is one of your very best. You nailed the root cause of the media's perfidy - a willful refusal to report truth about the behaviors of a criminal syndicate which wants to inflict suffering and death on Americans. I keep telling myself there has to be a way to counteract their toxic influence but I don't have a clue what it is.
I recently heard MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt agressively interviewing a Democrat, demanding to know why they weren’t willing to settle for what the Republicans were offering. She didn’t bother to say what that was. She gave the clear impression that Democrats were the ones obstructing relief. That kind of interview is the rule, not the exception, and is the reason so many believe that both sides can’t get anything done, politicians can’t be trusted, etc.
I heard that one. I was taken aback a little bit. It seemed like it was an open ended question. Just dropped from the sky and splat.. She is usually better than what she portrayed that day.
As I’m sure I’ve pointed out before because I’m a broken record, the DC press corps have had the GOP’s back since Reagan. I can’t think of any GOP initiative over the last forty years the press had any serious issue with. These initiatives include voter disenfranchisement, promoting racism, turning the economy from an inclusive one into an extractive one and ensuring a historically improper response to the pandemic which is to exacerbated things. We’re a failed state now thanks to primarily GOP efforts. And the press was supportive all the way.
So the insistence that we haven’t a Covid relief bill is due to “gridlock” as opposed to the fact that McConnell is blocking it. Which leads to a very ugly fact: the corporate media have gone from promoting misinformation to disinformation, which is a problem, to say the least.
The owners of news outlets and TV networks from my point of view are only in the news business not for telling the truth but for MONEY. The so called journalists who write and report what they now call the news are at fault for the state of what's wrong in our country. From the start they have given the gop a pass the American people know the truth even if the press doesn't tell the truth. The gop is set on destroying democracy and has been working on it for years. I have stopped looking at the news on TV because I'm always afraid I'll break the TV. I read about what's going on with a grain of salt. This newsletter and a few other newsletter are still upholding the truth. For that I thank you.
You’re welcome! And I do agree that there’s seems to be deliberate attempt to mask truth abt GOP
It isn’t just about the money. Reporters too often judge politicians the way they judge celebrities — how glamorous, entertaining, exciting, stylish they are. They want someone cool to hang with. Imagine how they would react if an American version of Angela Merkel tried to run for president. She would either be trashed as boring the way Gore was or ignored in favor of a more exciting candidate the way Hillary was.
In the recent Showtime documentary about Reagan Leslie Stahl “...describes the allure this first family had over the media as she recalls the first time he stepped into the White House briefing room to talk to the press. “We all kind of melted,” she says. “We were puddles on the floor.” “
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/11/arts/television/the-reagans.html
Frank Bruni swooned over GW Bush because Bush gave him the nickname “Panchito”. In contrast he actually criticized Gore for not attending to those kinds of little details because Gore was too focused on serious issues.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/general/news/2011/05/26/9654/think-again-the-times-frank-bruni-or-how-to-succeed-in-journalism-without-really-caring-about-issues/ Stahl has also described how the media willingly covered up the blatant evidence of Reagan’s senility:
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1999-02-07-9902080237-story.html
They also falls hard for guys that are good at pretending to be manly men. Look at how they swooned over the chickenhawks Cheney and Bush but showed disdain for Gore and Kerry, both men who volunteered to serve in Vietnam. If we the people dare to elect a person from Hicksville you can bet they will treat that person with disdain. Jimmy Carter was repeatedly called a peanut farmer; even that supposed paragon of journalism Tim Russert constantly called Clinton “Bubba”.
Shortly before Chris Matthews was given the boot at MSNBC I heard him shut down a guest who was discussing the competence of a candidate, telling him “I’m in the business of finding heroes”.
None of that behavior can be explained by money but it can be explained if you understand the mentality of high school kids desperate to be a part of the in crowd. I find that even behavior more pathetic than journalists who are afraid to anger their corporate bosses.
Maureen Dowd is Exhibit A for the "cool kid" behavior. It's why I stopped reading her years ago.
She really is despicable and it is a reflection on the Ny Times that they have kept her on for all these years. Here are some of the things she said about Gore during the 2000 election:
"Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."
"Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating."
“I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction."
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/10/gore200710
Not only are her comments beyond shallow and stupid, they are blatantly insulting to women. No way the Times would allow similarly racist comments to be published no matter how many clicks they would generate.
I remember that, it brings back bad memories of that election. She always thought she was being edgy, but she really has always just been a Mean Girl.
St. MoDo . Patron Saint of the Perpetually Petulant.
My tenure as one of her readers did not last very long. She was an opinion journalist not one based in facts.
I agree with you if the so called journalists wanting be with the cool kids so I guess 45 was a cool kid to them. I mean he's good at name calling and giving names that are offensive. But hey they're still in the in crowd. Sad for the American people they want to be cool.
Rich bullies often dominate the cool kids crowd in high school so why not in politics.
WhaTt do you think the percentage is, of "journalist' who actually attended journalism school? Most don't seem to have any affinity towards truth and honesty. There have been a couple over the years who appear to have come straight from their high school, college newspaper days. Maybe I am imagining it, but I question many of today's reporters vs. real journalists. No, FAUX, doesn't even come close. Those people are "faces for tv", nothing more.
Whether from high school or college everyone should know truth no matter what. That seems to be the case with so called journalists, forgotten truth. I often wonder how they look at themselves in the mirror and who and what do they see. Sad this is what America has become entertainment news for all.
But there is often a problem with journalists that doesn’t involve telling falsehoods although that also happens too much. Political journalists weren’t lying when they focused on the size of Trump’s crowds in 2016 but ignored the substance of Hillary’s campaign. Their he said/she said reporting is usually true. The reports Eric describes in this article are not literally false but they are still seriously misleading. The problem in a lot of cases is not false hoods but what reporter choose to report and what they choose to ignore.
No matter how you look at it in 2016 they didn't stand up for the people. They let a man talk about the size of his penis talking about the size of his hands and feet. The press tells the so called truth the way they want they are not falsehoods what we the people get are lies from liars. Whether journalists or politicians not falsehoods lies.
Excellent points. I've long contended that the media love the drama of their Republican Bully Daddies.
I don't watch national "news" on TV either and have not for many years.
What McConnell wants is no liability for corporations. Add that to the bill and maybe something gets passed. That's another point the mainstream media just glosses over. I applaud the Democrats for standing up to this bullying. Can you imagine working conditions if the corporate masters know that they can force workers to produce during the pandemic under any circumstance? If no liability was added to the bill, workers would assuredly need the stimulus and a lot more because the likelihood of them getting sick would increase dramatically. The Republicans remain the devil in this scenario. The Dems have more than capitulated and it's infuriating to see the press whitewash the obstructing Republicans. But what do we really expect from a party that is more than willing to throw out the clear results of an election because they are so frightened of their leader?
Agreed, press has gone awful job detailing what the various Covid relief bills look like
"Conservatives" remain committed to returning the U.S. to pre-industrial governance.
The press does the usual thing when discussing the bill passed by Nancy Pelosi and the House - they laugh it off as some pie-in-the-sky dreaming by silly Democrats who always want too much.
I think yr right...Dems are our in the sky while Republicans are depicted as super savvy
*pie in the sky
These are the same people who, for years, labeled Paul Ryan as a serious policy wonk. They are incapable of showing the Republicans as they truly are.
"Why is that story so hard for the press to tell?"
You used to read that reporters ran their story by the subjects for comments before going to press/air. It seems that cowardice in the name of access is tolerable to their bosses. Facts accompanied by "declined to comment when given the opportunity" do not make the press the enemy of the people. Or, if you prefer, should not.
Trump’s “enemy of the people” has clearly scared the press into inaction
Media behaved this way long before Trump.
That is why so many of them play nice so they can be invited "back" or possibly get an in person singular interview. The truth becomes their victim.
Judy Woodruff from PBS nightly news is another whiny both sides. God they make me sick ! I wouldn’t even think of watching the “traditional” MSM, but you can’t even escape it on the foreign news broadcasts.
Both Sides = Beltway DNA.
I think the real 2 Sides of the Beltway are the IN side and the OUT side...
PBS is wedded to civility no matter how despicable Republicans act.
My long-standing theory is that the L word for much of the media is not Liberal, but Lazy. I don't mean there aren't reporters who are hard-working and risk their lives, but they sure don't cover politics. The Laziness is this: It's easier to do They Said/They Said and Horse Race stories than do actual digging, which is what reporters are supposed to do. Dan Rather once said he hated the term "investigative reporter" because reporters were supposed to investigate. This is even true of good reports like the ones about, say, the Hobbesian war of "all against all" in the White House right now. The real story is that the people fighting with one another all agreed to be part of a treasonous conspiracy in the first place.
I agree, it’s so easy to just fall into the routine, collect quotes, and pretend Ds and Rs just can’t agree
I'll throw in that once upon a time, I was a kid reporter, and I realized that was true of me! So I am conscious of diagnosing it ....
I'm sick and tired of the both sides-isms and double standards coming from the likes of the WSJ (really? Dr Jill Biden should drop the Dr because she hasn't delivered a baby?) and news anchors like Andrea Mitchell, who loves a good "Dems do it too," angle. As bad as Trump has been at literally everything, they still cling to normalizing his presidency at all costs. Sadly, too many Americans believe both sides are at fault for everything that ails us, and I blame the Complicit Media for this.
Plus. . . Dua Lipa sounds good on blast in my car when I just need to go for a drive to get out of the house!
Yeah WSJ dude was out of pocket and just dumb. Andrea Mitchell is on my nerves. I think it's time for her to hang it up because I think her memory is going. She's looking a bit slow on the TV. I'm still mad at her for even asking Hillary if she should apologize to the people over her "emails" that right there did it for me. Like WTF?!
Reading about how the Beltway reporters are not doing their job just gets my blood boiling. And all the blame that is constantly put on Pelosi is infuriating. The s*it is being passed in the House and yet the Senate doesn't move it forward so how is that Pelosi's fault?! It's not. I wish they would get a grip and actually do the honest reporting that the country needs and furthermore how they are supposed to do their jobs. I'm so pissed. Thank you again Eric for telling it like it is and hoping the press actually would!!
Eric, this piece is one of your very best. You nailed the root cause of the media's perfidy - a willful refusal to report truth about the behaviors of a criminal syndicate which wants to inflict suffering and death on Americans. I keep telling myself there has to be a way to counteract their toxic influence but I don't have a clue what it is.
I recently heard MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt agressively interviewing a Democrat, demanding to know why they weren’t willing to settle for what the Republicans were offering. She didn’t bother to say what that was. She gave the clear impression that Democrats were the ones obstructing relief. That kind of interview is the rule, not the exception, and is the reason so many believe that both sides can’t get anything done, politicians can’t be trusted, etc.
I heard that one. I was taken aback a little bit. It seemed like it was an open ended question. Just dropped from the sky and splat.. She is usually better than what she portrayed that day.
Great piece, Eric.
As I’m sure I’ve pointed out before because I’m a broken record, the DC press corps have had the GOP’s back since Reagan. I can’t think of any GOP initiative over the last forty years the press had any serious issue with. These initiatives include voter disenfranchisement, promoting racism, turning the economy from an inclusive one into an extractive one and ensuring a historically improper response to the pandemic which is to exacerbated things. We’re a failed state now thanks to primarily GOP efforts. And the press was supportive all the way.
So the insistence that we haven’t a Covid relief bill is due to “gridlock” as opposed to the fact that McConnell is blocking it. Which leads to a very ugly fact: the corporate media have gone from promoting misinformation to disinformation, which is a problem, to say the least.