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Thursday’s Coordinated Editorials Are Profoundly Misguided
On Thursday, in newspapers across the country, a coordinated message is being sent about the hostility of the Trump administration against the press. CNN’s Brian Stelter has been talking on the story for days, and reported,
About 350 newspapers will all have one thing in common on Thursday: A statement supporting the free press and decrying President Trump’s attacks against the media.
From The Martha’s Vineyard Times to the Dallas Morning News… from the Yankton County Observer in South Dakota to the Bangor Daily News in Maine… the papers will all run editorials as part of an effort first proposed by the Boston Globe earlier this month.
Marjorie Pritchard, the Globe’s deputy editorial page editor, told CNN that more papers were still “signing on” for the effort as of Wednesday afternoon.
Each paper is writing its own editorial. “This whole project is not anti-Trump. It’s really pro-press,” The Globe’s version says.
The press is one of the most hated institutions in America; losing trust with every survey given to the American people about their opinions of various institutions in our country. Trump didn’t start the fire, he’s merely stoking it and warming his hands on it.
What, exactly, is the point of a “pro-press” editorial? It preaches to a choir of individuals who view the press as firefighters; and for the rest, well, it will go mostly unnoticed.
For a significant portion of Americans, however, this campaign with a message clearly aimed at the President has one effect: It shows the level of coordination taking place in newsrooms across the country, and just how much coordination of messaging is possible. The same media that continues to deny the fact that it has a bias, and that it isn’t monolithically against Donald J. Trump, then coordinated a massive effort to align its editorial messaging against the President. It reaffirms every negative perception many Americans have about the media; far from engendering support, it will likely have the opposite effect.
Published in General
Bethany,
Bad faith reaffirming bad faith. They are trapped so completely in their bubble that they don’t have a clue how much they are despised and certainly not why they are despised.
Regards,
Jim
Exactly. Your last paragraph, especially, is right on the mark. Thank you!
Someone has finally planned a national Cancel Your Paper Subscription Day. Better to put that money towards Ricochet;)
I’d be interested in knowing who didn’t participate so I can give the paper a look.
It is amazing how they cannot see that this just affirms an impression that many of us have had for years–they just copy each other.
This is really virtue signaling writ large. Those prone to that tactic prize it above self-examination.
There is no profession in America with a greater herd mentality than media, whether it’s movies, television, newspapers or broadcast news. There are individual original thinkers there but they’re conspicuously kept out of management positions.
What was once a cabal, coordinated by such things as Journolist, is now a openly coordinated political operation. This is being executed in close temporal proximity, to two other very public actions. This past week’s credulous recitation of Omarosa’s calumnies stains the media with another coat of well-earned #FakeNews. The embrace of such willful lies highlights the leftist control of the major social media and mobile operating systems (Apple iOS and Google Android) simultaneous servicing of CNN’s designated target last week.
“Really, really, we don’t all coordinate against the President!” said the media’s coordinated editorials against the President.
I don’t know when, exactly, that every media figure from national pundits down the most lowly, local beat reporter all started imagining themselves to be the Second Coming of Ernie Pyle but seeing how much they love bestowing awards on each other, I think we should acknowledge that trend with a “Stolen Valor” trophy — presented each year to the most egregious preeners who make themselves rather than their subjects, the main focus of every story they do.
This is going to backfire just like the NFL protests. When it was one or two players like Kapernick protesting, most people either didn’t care or were semi-sympathetic. However, when Trump made a statement that he would fire the protesting player – then large numbers of players made it their mission to kneel to protest against Trump, that is when the public really turned against the NFL and the players.
They just don’t get it. The public doesn’t hate the press because Trump attacks the press, the public likes Trump because he attacks the press.
They have the causality all backward and they will just drive the public further into the arms of Trump.
When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran the infamous Muhammad cartoons back in 2005 in an effort to call attention to violent Islamic jihadist censorship of the press, some thoughtful people called for many newspapers to join that lone paper in defying Islamic supremacism. Essentially none did, and the staff of Jyllands-Posten faced violence alone. Radical Islam won, and today there is widespread fear of depicting Muhammad, and virtually no news organizations or publishing houses are willing to do it.
Obviously, our nation’s newspapers are more afraid of Muslim extremists than they are of the President they have spent two years demonizing and portraying as a totalitarian. They are posturing: they know they are completely safe. When faced with a real threat, they back down faster than you can say “spike that.”
This is all projection on their part. What they really want is an America of mind numbing conformity where the only dissent allowed is that which they can properly tame and manage. They yearn to be organs of the State if they can be its leaders.
It’s like Christmas came early. I can’t believe they would do something this stupid. It’s awesome.
Bethany, Great and timely post. Not much to add after it.
More, they would not even take on the sexual predators in the entertainment industry, spiking the story until The New Yorker finally ran it. And they still only attacked acceptable targets. No problem running screaming headlines about the Catholic Church enabling and concealing sexual exploitation of minors, but are we really to believe that Hollywood, and the New York theater and modeling industries, are clean?
Co-ordinated editorials are bad… But how is this different than any other day of the week? Remember the JournoList scandal?
Democrats always get their talking points widely distributed each day – like the talking heads all take part in the same conference call each morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwYY5zDxB54
If you want the press to continue to undermine democracy, then this self-outing is “profoundly misguided”. If you believe in truth, justice and the American way – not so much.
I believe the press are firemen – the firemen from Fahrenheit 451.
This is silly. As much as I have contempt for Donald Trump, for, among other things, engaging in unseemly rhetoric against the press, he has not moved to deprive them of anything. He has not even denied press credentials to that egregious Jim Acosta. This is just an escalation of the crazy war. It certainly does not speak well for these newspapers.
Glenn Reynolds asks: “when a media competitor (CNN) gets a bunch of companies to take down its competitor, and they do, is that a conspiracy in restraint of trade? Asking for a friend.”
And there it is in a tidy nutshell – the truth. If only the media got it.
I distrusted the press long before Donal Trump entered the political arena. He has had zero effect on my opinion of the MSM.
I don’t know who coined the term, I understand it was actually someone on the Left describing Jim Acosta schtick as ‘performance journalism’. Find that term pretty apt for nearly the entire profession, print, radio and TV.
Prior commenters are correct, this predates Trump. Newt was the first conservative politician in recent times (say since 9/11) to hit back at them.
I have twenty bucks that say most journalists working today have little or no idea who Ernie Pyle was.
What many Americans don’t know is this coordination has been going on for years. But now it’s out in the open, and the MSM even acknowledges it with this stunt.
Rush has been exposing media coordination for years, best illustrated by his audio media montages, where anchors say the same thing almost identically. One of my favorites was Bush’s pick of Dick Cheney as his Veep. In Rush’s media montage, every news anchor used the word “gravitas” in describing the pick, implying Bush lacked it.
Heck, Rush even had a parody song done, “He Needs Gravitas”, sung to the tune of Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad”.
Perfect analogy @henryracette. You couldn’t do better at highlighting the absurd lie and meme, “Trump is a dictator, Trump is Hitler”.
George,
You and I are on the same page here. The White House Press Corps does not have a single registered Republican. For the last two years, every single press conference has been a pack of wolves attacking the President’s press secretary at every opportunity. Sarah Huckabee Sanders not only deserves a raise she deserves a medal for service above and beyond the call of duty.
The current gang of press parasites are the most spoiled 5th estate in history.
Regards,
Jim
Absent someone having a better memory than me, I think it was Ben Shapiro, on one of his Podcasts, who used this term.
You want coordinated editorials? I’ll show you coordinated editorials!
“Independent” news media (click through to watch video):