Joe Cooper
2016-12-22 15:32:29 UTC
President-elect Donald Trump probably will not often communicate with the
nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field
many questions from New York/Washington journalists.
What we know as "the media" never imagined a Trump victory. It has become
unhinged at the reality of a Trump presidency.
No wonder the fading establishment media is now distrusted by a majority
of the public, according to Gallup -- and becoming irrelevant even among
progressives.
Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter
Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal. But they at least hid their
inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter
stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback.
When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and
declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the
dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory.
The mainstream-media narrative in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald, the
Castroite, communist assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was a product
of right-wing Texas hatred was completely crazy -- but largely
unquestioned.
That old monopoly over the news, despite the advent of cable television
and the internet, still lingered until 2016. Even in recent years, Ivy
League journalism degrees and well-known media brand names seemed to
suggest better reporting than what was offered by bloggers and websites.
Soft-spoken liberal hosts on public TV and radio superficially sounded
more news-like than their gravelly-voiced populist counterparts on
commercial radio and cable news.
Yet the thinning veneer of circumspection that had supposedly
characterized the elite liberal successors to Cronkite and Brinkley was
finally ripped off completely by a media meltdown over Trump.
Journalists such as Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times and Christiane
Amanpour of CNN said that they could not -- and should not -- be neutral
reporters, given their low opinion of Trump.
When the press is unashamedly slanted, even its benefactors want even
more partiality -- media heartthrob Barack Obama included.
In his last press conference as president, Obama attacked pet journalists
for reporting on WikiLeaks' release of John Podesta's emails, supposedly
at the expense of his own legacy and Hillary Clinton's accomplishments.
The WikiLeaks trove certainly proved another disaster to the media -- but
only because it revealed that mainstream journalists conspired with the
Clinton campaign.
CNN's Donna Brazile leaked possible debate questions to Clinton. One op-
ed columnist, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, even asked Clintonites
for research to help him attack Trump.
Politico's Glenn Thrush sent a story to the Clinton campaign team to be
audited before publication. He begged to keep his collusion quiet and
admitted that he had become a "hack" for such journalistic impropriety.
Thrush may have been rewarded for his predictable left-wing bias,
recently being hired by the New York Times as a White House
correspondent.
Last week, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman grotesquely
suggested via Twitter that Trump might welcome another 9/11-like attack,
given that such a human catastrophe supposedly helped win support for
George W. Bush.
Recently, another Politico reporter, Julia Ioffe, used Twitter to relay a
news story about the possibility that Trump's daughter, Ivanka, would get
an office at the White House. In her tweet, Joffe suggested that Trump
was either having incestuous relations with his daughter or skirting
nepotism laws.
Politico fired Ioffe -- sort of. She had already announced that she was
moving from Politico to the Atlantic.
Yet the Atlantic announced that it would not rescind her hire --
suggesting that her political bias, despite the accompanying
unprofessionalism and uncouthness, could almost be interpreted as a plus.
In today's media, all of this progressive distortion serves as an
insurance policy for lapses of personal integrity like those of Thrush
and Joffe.
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams sermonized about the so-called "fake news"
epidemic. Williams failed to remind us that he was removed as NBC's
evening news anchor for serving up all sorts of fake details about his
supposedly brave trips abroad in search of edgy news stories.
After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the co-
hosts of the show "CNN Newsroom" collectively put up their hands in
"hands up, don't shoot" solidarity -- echoing a narrative of police
murder later proved to be completely false by a lengthy federal
investigation.
Decades-long journalistic one-sidedness was apparently tolerable when
there were no other news alternatives. Mainstream-media monopolies once
were also highly profitable, and long-ago liberal news people were at
least well-mannered.
All of those assumptions are no longer true. News outlets such as The New
York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the
National Enquirer.
Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional
journalism as we once knew it?
Source: http://bit.ly/2hdu6jB
nation via traditional press conferences. Nor will Trump likely field
many questions from New York/Washington journalists.
What we know as "the media" never imagined a Trump victory. It has become
unhinged at the reality of a Trump presidency.
No wonder the fading establishment media is now distrusted by a majority
of the public, according to Gallup -- and becoming irrelevant even among
progressives.
Once upon a time in the 1960s, all the iconic news anchors, from Walter
Cronkite to David Brinkley, were liberal. But they at least hid their
inherent biases behind a professional veneer that allowed them to filter
stories through left-wing lenses without much pushback.
When Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the 1968 Tet Offensive and
declared the war stalemated and unwinnable, no one dared to offer the
dissenting viewpoint that Tet was actually a decisive American victory.
The mainstream-media narrative in 1963 that Lee Harvey Oswald, the
Castroite, communist assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was a product
of right-wing Texas hatred was completely crazy -- but largely
unquestioned.
That old monopoly over the news, despite the advent of cable television
and the internet, still lingered until 2016. Even in recent years, Ivy
League journalism degrees and well-known media brand names seemed to
suggest better reporting than what was offered by bloggers and websites.
Soft-spoken liberal hosts on public TV and radio superficially sounded
more news-like than their gravelly-voiced populist counterparts on
commercial radio and cable news.
Yet the thinning veneer of circumspection that had supposedly
characterized the elite liberal successors to Cronkite and Brinkley was
finally ripped off completely by a media meltdown over Trump.
Journalists such as Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times and Christiane
Amanpour of CNN said that they could not -- and should not -- be neutral
reporters, given their low opinion of Trump.
When the press is unashamedly slanted, even its benefactors want even
more partiality -- media heartthrob Barack Obama included.
In his last press conference as president, Obama attacked pet journalists
for reporting on WikiLeaks' release of John Podesta's emails, supposedly
at the expense of his own legacy and Hillary Clinton's accomplishments.
The WikiLeaks trove certainly proved another disaster to the media -- but
only because it revealed that mainstream journalists conspired with the
Clinton campaign.
CNN's Donna Brazile leaked possible debate questions to Clinton. One op-
ed columnist, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, even asked Clintonites
for research to help him attack Trump.
Politico's Glenn Thrush sent a story to the Clinton campaign team to be
audited before publication. He begged to keep his collusion quiet and
admitted that he had become a "hack" for such journalistic impropriety.
Thrush may have been rewarded for his predictable left-wing bias,
recently being hired by the New York Times as a White House
correspondent.
Last week, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman grotesquely
suggested via Twitter that Trump might welcome another 9/11-like attack,
given that such a human catastrophe supposedly helped win support for
George W. Bush.
Recently, another Politico reporter, Julia Ioffe, used Twitter to relay a
news story about the possibility that Trump's daughter, Ivanka, would get
an office at the White House. In her tweet, Joffe suggested that Trump
was either having incestuous relations with his daughter or skirting
nepotism laws.
Politico fired Ioffe -- sort of. She had already announced that she was
moving from Politico to the Atlantic.
Yet the Atlantic announced that it would not rescind her hire --
suggesting that her political bias, despite the accompanying
unprofessionalism and uncouthness, could almost be interpreted as a plus.
In today's media, all of this progressive distortion serves as an
insurance policy for lapses of personal integrity like those of Thrush
and Joffe.
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams sermonized about the so-called "fake news"
epidemic. Williams failed to remind us that he was removed as NBC's
evening news anchor for serving up all sorts of fake details about his
supposedly brave trips abroad in search of edgy news stories.
After the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the co-
hosts of the show "CNN Newsroom" collectively put up their hands in
"hands up, don't shoot" solidarity -- echoing a narrative of police
murder later proved to be completely false by a lengthy federal
investigation.
Decades-long journalistic one-sidedness was apparently tolerable when
there were no other news alternatives. Mainstream-media monopolies once
were also highly profitable, and long-ago liberal news people were at
least well-mannered.
All of those assumptions are no longer true. News outlets such as The New
York Times and NBC have no more credibility than most websites or the
National Enquirer.
Is it any surprise that we are witnessing the funeral for traditional
journalism as we once knew it?
Source: http://bit.ly/2hdu6jB
--
“Don't let Democrats get away with pretending to care about blacks while
they fight tooth and nail against any policy that would give blacks a
chance to earn their share of the American Dream." (Tom Trinko)
“Don't let Democrats get away with pretending to care about blacks while
they fight tooth and nail against any policy that would give blacks a
chance to earn their share of the American Dream." (Tom Trinko)