when history looks back on the media and donnie's four years,

[unblock]

it will say rank this period with the worst of yellow journalism's long, ugly traditions.

thing is, donnie getting defeated in november shouldn't come as a surprise. in retrospect, history will recognize that donnie was an absolutely horrible politician and went against nearly every bit of basic political wisdom ever.

relentlessly offending nearly every demographic.
lying too obviously.
generating scandal after scandal and handling them poorly.
massive staff turnover.
shooting off public communications impulsively instead of carefully choosing words.
... and the list goes on and on, and i'm not even getting into policy disasters.

history will put all this together and question how the hell did the media manage to cover such an obvious failure and loser as if he stood a chance, as if he wasn't doomed to a single term early on.

the media has proven eminently capable of writing politicians off, of denying them airtime, of refusing to let get in a word edgewise over their shouts about a scandal. the media knows how to completely destroy political careers, and they do this to democrats all the time.

yet they chose not to give donnie this treatment. time and time again, they presented him as a viable candidate for re-election, despite having disapprovals higher than approvals virtually every single day of his presidency. despite having the most consistently high strongly disapprove numbers of any president ever.

history will show that the way the media pushed donnie on us and continued to prop him up long after he proved himself to be a complete and utter disaster to be one of the greatest periods of shame in american journalism's history.



and if i know american journalism traditions, a brief period of "introspection" will be followed by a commitment to be much more cynical and negative and less accepting -- of the biden administration....

[Iliyah]

1. Early 21 century of horror, nightmares, violence, . ... .

hatred, et al. History will not be kind to shithole and it should not be, he is the devil.

[RKP5637]

2. The media will be judged as complicit and/or complacent, and anything for the money.

We pretty much do not have decent credible journalism with much of MSM.

[pwb]

3. I think Trump conned the cable media and

Last edited Fri Oct 16, 2020, 09:17 PM - Edit history (1)

plays them like a fiddle. Investigative print media trump cant play with.

[unblock]

5. I don't think he conned anyone except the masses of Trumpies

I think the media and other republican politicians knew pretty much exactly what he was. It's not like any of this was really a secret. Liar, conman, business failure, sexist, racist, connections to crooks, etc., everyone in New York knew all this and its not like the media have no connections in New York ffs.

They just figured they could profit from it one way or another.

[Laelth]

4. The last paragraph is spot on.

After years of poor reporting and boot-licking while a Republican was in office, the media will have a come-to-Jesus moment and decide to be hard-hitting, responsible, and suspicious journalists ... as soon as a Democrat is elected.

I, too, have witnessed this dynamic. It’s sickening, but I am expecting to see it happen again.

-Laelth

[Mr. Ected]

6. Until we sort out the news from the propaganda being slung at Americans daily

All of this is merely academic.

We cannot continue in this journalistic quagmire of disinformation conflated with information and hope to survive as a political or economic entity.

[unblock]

7. disinformation and right-wing opinion and simplistic analysis and schoolyard taunts

This has been a problem long before Donnie.

In effect, we decide who to be allies with and who to go to war against and what taxes should be and whether we get health insurance and all that based on whether someone looks silly wearing a helmet or sighs during a debate or had a good zinger or got stuck with a funny negative nickname.

I'm not so naive to think that crap never has a role in politics (it ain't beanbag, I get that) but the proportion of that kind of nonsense to any meaningful discussion of policy is abysmal in this country.

[WyattKansas]

8. There needs to be a clear separation between Journalism/News and Opinion/Fictional Tabloid Peddling.

The Opinion/Fictional Tabloid Peddling shall never be allowed to every portray itself as a factual news organization or having the credibility standards allowed in government reporting, functions, and/or operations.



Well how in the Hell do we keep the Republican Fraud side from gaming and screwing up everything they put their sleazy paws on?

[marked50]

9. The media stuff is all relevant for it's complicity but I think that the bigger issue is

the overwhelming influence of the new, technologically available " social media". Media now is only secondary to this.