There is fact checking and there is nit picking. The corporate media refuses to fact check Trump and Republican whose lies are obvious. But they are happy to nit pick Democrats trying desperately to equate the two. Why? Because they are desperate to preserve the horse race and bothsiderism, and accurate, objective reporting on Republican fuckery would make that impossible.
A reset requires that the MSM show a willingness to change their ways. I see no evidence of that. They know what they are doing. I believe that Big Corporate Media is still in the tank for Trump and they will be until the very end. The CEO and owners want what he promises. MSM print and broadcast press report only what their corporate bosses want and will allow. The directive from the top is to “tell both sides” of the story. As so many in the non-MSM media and their readers have been pointing out for far too long, the forced both sides story is not only wrong but it is dangerous. It helped get us the Trump presidency, helped to undermine Joe Biden and the phenomenal achievements of his administration and is on the same track with the Harris-Walz ticket (thankfully with less success). Unless they are total fools (they are not) they are and have always been aware of what they are doing. The full why of this anti-democratic both sides reporting isn’t completely clear and there have been myriad theories all of which probably are a part of the whole truth. What ever the reasons, the damage to our democracy is real. I can’t find fault with your four point plan. But I feel pretty confident in believing it will not be implemented as long as the MSM continues to exist in its current form. The WP should hire you back and give you the task of implementing the plan. Then I might start to believe.
Thank you. And yeah, sadly, if anything I see signs that the NYT and WaPo in particular are doubling down on both-sidesism, rather than recognizing how they've been played.
What boggles my mind is that they have been played over and over and never learn. I keep going back to all the lies the NY Times went along with during the Clinton Adminstration. At the time I was shocked that the rest of the media followed the lead of the Times. My eyes were opened to that fact after I happened to find Gene Lyons’s book “Fools for Scandal” detailing how the mainstream “liberal” media got conned (?) into going along with the Arkansas Project’s slanders of Clinton.
Imagine how different those years would have been if the Times had bothered to debunk the claims about the Whitewater land deal and other pseudo-scandals instead of gullibly reporting the claims of rightwing operatives. Imagine if the Times had bothered to talk to WMD experts at the CIA and reported on the serious doubts that they had about Saddam having an active WMD program like Knight-Ridder’s Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel did. That is the kind of substantive fact-checking I expect journalists to do.
Since that time it has only gotten worse. The Times and WaPo getting rid of their public ombudsman was a blatant signal to readers that they don’t want to hear our criticisms. The Times’s Dean Baquet’s explanation/excuse was that they got critiques through comments on articles and from social media. The Times then reduced the number of articles that allowed comments. Baquet then told reporters to stop paying attention to social media. The arrogance still astounds me.
I totally subscribe to your four-point plan, and I would agree that it would require a "serious reset." There are ways to encourage this reset, most notably for your readers to circulate your views as widely as possible, especially to political media, where they will do the most good. But as we work for the reset, is there anything that can be done immediately, either by current "fact-checkers" or by widely read commentators, to improve the situation? I personally believe that real-time fact-checking is the least practical part of your program. Whenever most interviewers try this, the interviewee simply talks over their criticism or starts dishing out the word salad. Trump, of course, is the most practiced and skillful politician when it comes to dealing with tough questioning. Progressives could laugh at his racist tropes and outright lies at the NABJ interview, but all his blustering is aimed at his base, which I'm sure swallowed his bigotry whole. Some interviewers seem to be more effective at snapping back than others, of course. Could you offer some practical suggestions interviewers or news services might use to begin real-time fact checking? In the meantime, keep up the great work!
Dan, this piece is smokin' hot!! Hot, hot, hot! Thank you for all you do!
As long as FOX and the mini-FOX's can spew a largely fact-free torrent of mis- and dis-information, and refuse to almost entirely eschew actual journalistic ethics, is there any real hope that things will change?
Or do you believe that successfully spurring the MSM to clean up their act will eventually either reform--or marginalize--right-wing media?
I am more concerned about debunking the mainstream media. I find it frustration that my old go-to source for that, Media Matters, now focuses mostly on right wing media criticism. I agree with Steve Bannon when he told Joshua Green (Devil’s Bargain) that it’s the mainstream media that does the real damage to Democrats. Bannon and his partner Peter Schweizer successfully getting the MSM to buy into their smears of the Clinton Foundation in Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” proved his point. Those lies seriously damaged Hillary’s approval ratings and laid the foundation for the “Crooked Hillary” meme.
As you said Daniel Dale's lede re: the 2nd night was better. But his fact-checking after the first night contained many of the was more of the hair-splitting. One example: "Garcia’s claim is misleading. Trump never portrayed his . . . 2020 musings about the possibility of using disinfectant to treat Covid-19 as actual advice . . . Trump was talking about scientists testing the possibility of using disinfectant as a treatment."
The owners are more right wing than they let on. And all are big corporations. For my money, the American edition of The Guardian has become my go-to for legitimate political commentary/news. I have no trust in the WP or NYT....zilch
During the Bush years, Politifact came into existence. Prior to that, there were other fact checkers, but Politifact's format lent itself more easily to quantification. I had been doubting my perception that Republicans lied at a greater rate than Democrats, and Politifact gave me a means to test that. I developed a spreadsheet that could quantify the rulings from Politifact, and to my surprise, Republicans lied more than Democrats. A LOT more. We have to do better.
There is fact checking and there is nit picking. The corporate media refuses to fact check Trump and Republican whose lies are obvious. But they are happy to nit pick Democrats trying desperately to equate the two. Why? Because they are desperate to preserve the horse race and bothsiderism, and accurate, objective reporting on Republican fuckery would make that impossible.
If journalists would write the truth in the first place, we wouldn't need "fact checkers," let alone ones who can't seem to get their facts straight.
I love the idea of holding the media to account - yet ultimately the media caters not to the bosses or shareholders - but to consumers...
yellow press has existed for hundreds of years - i.e. consumers' addiction to virality and sensationalism is nothing new
change consumer behavior, and you change the world (and the media, and politics)
Great work, Dan. Many thanks.
A reset requires that the MSM show a willingness to change their ways. I see no evidence of that. They know what they are doing. I believe that Big Corporate Media is still in the tank for Trump and they will be until the very end. The CEO and owners want what he promises. MSM print and broadcast press report only what their corporate bosses want and will allow. The directive from the top is to “tell both sides” of the story. As so many in the non-MSM media and their readers have been pointing out for far too long, the forced both sides story is not only wrong but it is dangerous. It helped get us the Trump presidency, helped to undermine Joe Biden and the phenomenal achievements of his administration and is on the same track with the Harris-Walz ticket (thankfully with less success). Unless they are total fools (they are not) they are and have always been aware of what they are doing. The full why of this anti-democratic both sides reporting isn’t completely clear and there have been myriad theories all of which probably are a part of the whole truth. What ever the reasons, the damage to our democracy is real. I can’t find fault with your four point plan. But I feel pretty confident in believing it will not be implemented as long as the MSM continues to exist in its current form. The WP should hire you back and give you the task of implementing the plan. Then I might start to believe.
do consumers have a role? (i.e. we can't just blame CEOs, shareholders and capitalism?)
who is ultimately responsible for addiction to virality and radicalization?
(not (social) media methink... but the culture)
Thank you. And yeah, sadly, if anything I see signs that the NYT and WaPo in particular are doubling down on both-sidesism, rather than recognizing how they've been played.
What boggles my mind is that they have been played over and over and never learn. I keep going back to all the lies the NY Times went along with during the Clinton Adminstration. At the time I was shocked that the rest of the media followed the lead of the Times. My eyes were opened to that fact after I happened to find Gene Lyons’s book “Fools for Scandal” detailing how the mainstream “liberal” media got conned (?) into going along with the Arkansas Project’s slanders of Clinton.
Imagine how different those years would have been if the Times had bothered to debunk the claims about the Whitewater land deal and other pseudo-scandals instead of gullibly reporting the claims of rightwing operatives. Imagine if the Times had bothered to talk to WMD experts at the CIA and reported on the serious doubts that they had about Saddam having an active WMD program like Knight-Ridder’s Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel did. That is the kind of substantive fact-checking I expect journalists to do.
Since that time it has only gotten worse. The Times and WaPo getting rid of their public ombudsman was a blatant signal to readers that they don’t want to hear our criticisms. The Times’s Dean Baquet’s explanation/excuse was that they got critiques through comments on articles and from social media. The Times then reduced the number of articles that allowed comments. Baquet then told reporters to stop paying attention to social media. The arrogance still astounds me.
I totally subscribe to your four-point plan, and I would agree that it would require a "serious reset." There are ways to encourage this reset, most notably for your readers to circulate your views as widely as possible, especially to political media, where they will do the most good. But as we work for the reset, is there anything that can be done immediately, either by current "fact-checkers" or by widely read commentators, to improve the situation? I personally believe that real-time fact-checking is the least practical part of your program. Whenever most interviewers try this, the interviewee simply talks over their criticism or starts dishing out the word salad. Trump, of course, is the most practiced and skillful politician when it comes to dealing with tough questioning. Progressives could laugh at his racist tropes and outright lies at the NABJ interview, but all his blustering is aimed at his base, which I'm sure swallowed his bigotry whole. Some interviewers seem to be more effective at snapping back than others, of course. Could you offer some practical suggestions interviewers or news services might use to begin real-time fact checking? In the meantime, keep up the great work!
When interviewing an inveterate liar like Trump, start off by presenting him with facts that he denies, then ask him why?
Dan, this piece is smokin' hot!! Hot, hot, hot! Thank you for all you do!
As long as FOX and the mini-FOX's can spew a largely fact-free torrent of mis- and dis-information, and refuse to almost entirely eschew actual journalistic ethics, is there any real hope that things will change?
Or do you believe that successfully spurring the MSM to clean up their act will eventually either reform--or marginalize--right-wing media?
Thank you! I'd like to see the reality-based media recognize that its job now includes debunking the right-wing media.
I am more concerned about debunking the mainstream media. I find it frustration that my old go-to source for that, Media Matters, now focuses mostly on right wing media criticism. I agree with Steve Bannon when he told Joshua Green (Devil’s Bargain) that it’s the mainstream media that does the real damage to Democrats. Bannon and his partner Peter Schweizer successfully getting the MSM to buy into their smears of the Clinton Foundation in Schweizer’s book “Clinton Cash” proved his point. Those lies seriously damaged Hillary’s approval ratings and laid the foundation for the “Crooked Hillary” meme.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-bannons-multimedia-machine-drove-a-movement-and-paid-him-millions/2017/04/09/203df1ce-197b-11e7-855e-4824bbb5d748_story.html
As you said Daniel Dale's lede re: the 2nd night was better. But his fact-checking after the first night contained many of the was more of the hair-splitting. One example: "Garcia’s claim is misleading. Trump never portrayed his . . . 2020 musings about the possibility of using disinfectant to treat Covid-19 as actual advice . . . Trump was talking about scientists testing the possibility of using disinfectant as a treatment."
Isn’t it obvious why they’re doing this “fact” thingie? They’ve been criticized by the rightwing.
The owners are more right wing than they let on. And all are big corporations. For my money, the American edition of The Guardian has become my go-to for legitimate political commentary/news. I have no trust in the WP or NYT....zilch
During the Bush years, Politifact came into existence. Prior to that, there were other fact checkers, but Politifact's format lent itself more easily to quantification. I had been doubting my perception that Republicans lied at a greater rate than Democrats, and Politifact gave me a means to test that. I developed a spreadsheet that could quantify the rulings from Politifact, and to my surprise, Republicans lied more than Democrats. A LOT more. We have to do better.
Thank you - once again, you are spot on.