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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBeware mealy-mouthed and misleading language
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/media-beware-impeachment-hearings-will-be-the-trickiest-test-of-covering-trump/2019/11/08/1f2b0aac-0239-11ea-8501-2a7123a38c58_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1<<snip>>
Beware mealy-mouthed and misleading language. Punditry will be running even more amok than usual once the hearings begin. And well be hearing a lot about what a divided nation we have and how ugly politics has become. Well be hearing the term quid pro quo endlessly.
Jon Allsop, writing in Columbia Journalism Review, suggested quid pro quo is inaccurate: A president threatening to withhold military aid to a country unless it offers dirt on a domestic political rival, as Trump did, is not merely trading favors. Questions about extortion or bribery far riskier terms for would-be balanced journalists are closer to the mark.
As for polarization, its a kind of false equivalence expressed in a single term, suggested Rosen: We hear, Oh things are so polarized now, when this is really about whats happened to the Republican Party.
In a potent Twitter thread last week, Ezra Klein of Vox pointed out that Trumps abuses are so blatant that he is the easiest possible test case for Can our system hold a president accountable? And we are failing, because Republicans are failing.
When journalists opt for safe language, when they pointlessly speculate, or succumb to Trumps sideshow, they flunk the test.
Time to study up and ace it.
Wounded Bear
(58,437 posts)and it is kind of hard not to respond in kind. That's what they're counting on.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,355 posts)Congress is holding him accountable using the duly created mechanisms put in place by the US Constitution for *allegedly* trying to use his powers as President as a means of smearing a potential political rival in the next Presidential election. Republicans are crying foul only because their boy got caught doing it this time (unlike with Russia 2016) and all they have to argue against is process, which, as far as I can tell, Democrats are following- per the rules the REPUBLICANS themselves created.
Wounded Bear
(58,437 posts)Proud Liberal Dem
(24,355 posts)dajoki
(10,678 posts)that illegitimate conspired with Russia in 2016. One big problem was that the repukes had a two year head start in trying to cover the whole thing up and then barr stepped in to try to end the entire thing. I believe that the Democrats must keep pursuing the truth and make it part of the impeachment, subpoenas must be honored, the facts must be told and the truth needs to come out. We can still focus on the Ukraine scandal but everything has to be put out to the American people.
Proud Liberal Dem
(24,355 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,032 posts)The multi-millionaires on tv are assisting the other puppets of oligarchs in the promotion of false equivalence and the softening of the current crisis for the masses.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,911 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Yes! The whole article is worth reading as a smartening up for what we're going to be seeing.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,032 posts)kentuck
(110,950 posts)Seems to be the message?