Scott Jennings on CNN:
"This election is something of an indictment on the political information complex. The story that was portrayed was not true. We were just ignoring the fundamentals."
Scott Jennings does a flawless job taking down an entire panel of woke CNN hosts. pic.twitter.com/w2eBJeTi6E
— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) November 6, 2024
Brian Stelter and an anonymous aide:
"Maybe we have a point," a Trump aide remarked overnight. "Maybe 'misinformation' is a lazy word that was never applied to press coverage of Biden's health or the border. Maybe 'offensive' things aren't offensive to most." Maybe, the aide added, some more humility is called for.
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 6, 2024
Uri Berliner at The Free Press:
It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story. Unfortunately, it happens. You follow the wrong leads, you get misled by sources you trusted, you’re emotionally invested in a narrative, and bits of circumstantial evidence never add up. It’s bad to blow a big story.
What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions, but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.
From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer:
…as one of the TV execs put it, “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely. A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.”
The MSM has been dead for a while. Also D’s (Biden especially) struggled and failed to use the MSM, for the limited use it has. We had a giant ship take down a bridge in Baltimore. It was a big frickin deal. In the last week or so they got the port up and running. That is the time a prez or candidate should be making speeches and bragging, but they didn’t and the MSM/larger social media space pays attention to bragging and much less about what actually happened.
The “MSM”, in general and w/o actually looking up data, still makes enough money for it’s owners so i’m not betting on change.
D’s need to move far more into the social media space on youtube, podcasts, etc. Cause the old MSM ain’t what it was and doesn’t have the juice.Report
This is the quote that seems to capture it for me:
The NY Times has 10 million subscribers. That seems like a lot but it’s a small fraction of the people who vote.
Many of those people don’t read newspapers any more. Fox News doesn’t have that many viewers. People listen to podcasts and read Facebook, and watch Twitch and YouTube along with other stuff.
The media climate is so, so different than we thought.Report
The NYT has 10 mil with most of them being in the NY tri state area then spreading down the Acela corridor. It’s always been local paper for NY with national add ons. That lots of old MSM/legacy media still have pay walls is part of their problem that limits there reach.Report
This is flat-out incorrect. The NY Times is a National paper with a NYC metro section. It sets the national news narrative with mainstream media and that has been the case since radio and tv news has existed. A headline in the NY Times in the morning is a block A story for the rest of the country.
Just today I woke up to the “dark” headline and then an hour later on NBC someone was parroting the exact language.Report
God you guys won and you STILL can’t stop lying.
No one down here reads the NYT. No one outside the northeast corridor reads the NYT – and if the do its on line.
That other news media follow its lead says nothing good about the NYT or those media, only that they are one big circular firing squad.Report
You obviously don’t understand how the media ecosystem works.Report
I understand it very well. And I am pi$$ed at it for preferring a horse race to reporting the truth.
Still true the the NYT is not any more national presence. And hasn’t been for along time.Report
If they have no national presence, why are you pissed at it?
You have no idea what you’re talking about.
The NYT still sets the narrative for national media. Your problem is that everyone understands that narrative is biased BS.Report
My problem is the NYT refused to tell the good story of the Biden Administration’s success leading us out of COVID because they didn’t want to appear biased. My problem is the NYT withheld its endorsement of the better candidate because they got butt hurt over when they got interviews. My problem is the NYT still acts like a national organizations when they aren’t.
And we are all going to pay dearly for that hubris. Some of us more likely then others.Report
The WaPo thing was a good start, I think. No more endorsements. Let your reporters say “I’m voting third party!” or whatever. Hell, let your editors say that. Don’t have the paper give an official one.
It should be enough to know that 19 of the 20 reporters voted for Harris and the twentieth said that they don’t vote because they don’t want it to impact their own impartiality.
And I can draw my own conclusions from that.
That’s not a *FINISHING* point, mind… but it’s a starting point.Report
The WaPO and NYT – to the extent they are to blame – did exactly the wrong things. They showed the bullies they could be cowed. This will not end well.Report
One of Misha’s threads is pretty good about this:
We have to go back to a place where we’re seeing reality. Reality, as it turns out, is important.
Important enough to report on.Report
And when he follows through on his promises – remember those were his word we reacted to – then what? When he commodifies my agency and I’m fired either because we no longer have the mission or because I won’t swear loyalty to him, then what?
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t believe him, but “you have to understand” is not exactly an assurance of comfort. Or your support.Report
I’m not trying to comfort you.
If I were trying to comfort you, I’d be lying to you instead of trying my best to tell you things that I believe are true.Report
I don’t want your comfort, nor do I expect it.
I demand your protection when the time comes, since its a high civic duty. I also do not expect your protection, in as much as your support of conspiracy theorires and third party candidates is one reason I am now in this pickle.
I do not trust you Jaybird. That should worry you.Report
I have been warning about how high collaboration requires high trust for a while now.
Moving from higher to lower trust will have attendant costs.Report
You and I have moved from low trust to no trust. Ditto many other Americans.
Yes it will have attendant costs. Which you seem to believe you will not have to bear.
May the odds be ever in your favor.Report
I do find myself hoping for non-corrupt law enforcement (or, quite honestly, law enforcement with an acceptable level of corruption is more in reach).
You never know when someone will break the social contract, after all.Report
Here is John Kelly, swearing _under oath_, that Trump discussed having the IRS go after
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/oath-john-kelly-raises-serious-allegations-trump-rcna93367
(Link to Maddow instead of the paywalled NYT.)
That is a four-star Marine General swearing under oath that Trump will, in fact, go after civil servants, not just by firing but trying to have them investigated…and only being stopped by the adults in the room, who will not be there this time.Report
Hey, look, it turns out Jaybird has read basically none of the insider accounts of the Trump administration and what the ‘adults in the room’ had to stop him from doing.
We _already know_ what Trump wants to do. It’s not just that he tells us, it’s that he literally had to be talked out of them or even _lied to_ as president to stop from doing them.
Here is four star Marine-General John Kelly, Trump’s Chief of Staff: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/10/22/2024-elections-live-coverage-updates-analysis/john-kelly-donald-trump-fascist-00184999
Here is a bunch of other people talking about that: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/25/never-trump-former-officials-back-kelly-warning-00185435
Why do you think all these people, who are mostly Republicans and apparently didn’t have any problem working for Trump when hired, have started lying about him?Report
You are perfectly free to start a newspaper and run it on those principles. But your principles are just that — your principles. They are not baked into the cake of the moral universe, grounded in the history of journalism (quite the opposite, in fact), or anything else. Of course freedom of the press is for those who own one, but who knows, you might hit the lotteryReport
Well, let’s hope that Bezos doesn’t lay down the law and say “no endorsements!” or something like that.Report
Bezos owns a newspaper and can do what he wants. Like anyone else who owns a newspaper. And the rest of us can point and laugh. Or cancel our subscriptions.Report
It’s hard to find subscriptions by year. I would be very interested in looking at a year-by-year since 2012.
Report
I’m sure you would. What it might contribute to the point under discussion is obscure, but what else is new?Report
I’m going back a long time. i can’t recall what election it was. Might have been Bush 1 or 2. Maybe not.
Some TV announcer in Wash or NYC said “how could he win, nobody I know voted for him?”
Of course not. You live in a bubble. All your friends/co workers/neighbors/etc are all like you politically. This is just more of the same….
And people wonder why I don’t talk about politics in person…..Report
I think you’re thinking of Pauline Kael, a film critic on staff at the New Yorker in 1971. Her actual quote about the 1968 election was:
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.
This is often paraphrased as:
I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.
She did not actually say the paraphrase, and whether the paraphrase or the actual quote is more palatable, I think you have to decide for yourself. But the actual quote demonstrates she was aware she was in a bubble.Report
Nope, it was in the 80s or 90s. I’m not that old 🙂Report
It’s entirely possible that somebody did say something like that in the ’80s or ’90s, and almost certain that he was harking back to the common misunderstanding of what Kael said.Report
Fifty years and counting of “media criticism” of the Lügenpresse, while its critics never succeed in producing something better.
It’s just boring at this point. Sure, they fuck up. They’re human. It happens.
On last night’s BBC coverage, one of the anchors asked a Trump spokesman if the campaign had any weaknesses or regrets. The spokesman launched into an attack on the lying liberal media. Insert tape, press play.Report
I could see someone argue that Joe Rogan is “something better”. A long-form interview that allows for in-depth discussions about whatever flits through Rogan’s head.Report
Some of us noticed this in 2016.
My only consolation is that a few of these media idiots are going to be harassed or even arrested by Trump.Report
Amanda Marcotte makes a similar point:
https://www.salon.com/2024/11/08/americas-political-discordance-the-want-progressivism/Report
Reality-based news:
“Inflation is transitory”
“Crime is down”
“You’re better off than you were four years ago”
“Iowa will go to Biden by 3 points”Report