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Can Journalists Discern Fact and Opinion?
Yesterday President Trump addressed the nation following two shooting attacks in Texas and Ohio. Pundits and commentators demanded he do so, that he strike a note that comforted and reassured the American people. And he did. Yesterday we definitely saw “good Trump,” looking presidential and sounding professional.
The First Lady and I join all Americans in praying and grieving for the victims, their families, and the survivors. We will stand by their side FOREVER! pic.twitter.com/zOQLvAuXoh
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2019
The same pundits who called for Trump to make a statement decided it didn’t matter what he said, nothing would ever be good enough.
Ana Navarro 10 hours ago: "Trump cannot speak against: white supremacist domestic terrorism."
***Trump speaks out against white supremacist domestic terrorism***
Ana Navarro now: "I don't give a damn what Trump says"
You literally cannot make this up. pic.twitter.com/Ic2vkM9kiu
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) August 5, 2019
They couldn’t give credit where it was due, instead obsessing over a Teleprompter typo:
Trump had one job: read a script off a Teleprompter & pretend to care about racism. That's it. He said Toledo instead of Dayton. Just pause and reflect. That means the entire Administration couldn't even give a single F to get the city right. The writers, editors, Trump. No one.
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) August 5, 2019
And the same individuals blaming the El Paso shooting on President Trump’s rhetoric were willfully ignorant of the impact of their own:
We need to call it out: Fox News is a hate-for-profit machine that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists. https://t.co/f1QkIE7sbB
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) August 4, 2019
If you work for Fox News, advertise on Fox News, or support Fox News in any way, you are enabling the spread of White Nationalism in America and probably making a pretty penny doing so. https://t.co/v5pTrNIlDz
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) August 5, 2019
And the result of this kind of charged rhetoric? We saw it on Senator Mitch McConnell’s lawn last night in Kentucky:
https://twitter.com/BenGoldey/status/1158562980629536768
As perhaps a result of all of this, the New York Times did something responsible: they reported straight on the President’s remarks. Of course, that’s not acceptable for the Resistance, and Twitter pounced on their headline so ferociously, they changed it for future editions:
New York Times releases a second edition with a different headline after Twitter backlash and liberals announce they’re canceling subscriptions. pic.twitter.com/fxLav5pQHP
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 6, 2019
The first headline read “Trump Urges Unity Vs. Racism” while the second said “Assailing Hate But Not Guns.” The journalists of Twitter would not stand for the Times not editorializing their news coverage of the President and his response, and it’s telling how incapable the mainstream media and those who work in it are to tell the difference between fact and opinion. This was a typical and frightening exchange I had on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/EcoSexuality/status/1158580391768395776
I can’t help but think back to when I was a kid reading the newspaper, and my teachers would ask us “fact or opinion?” A lot of journalists may want to head back to first grade for a refresher course.
Published in General
My husband goes on a rant every morning reading our local paper. Most of the national news is from AP, and it is so blatantly biased that it’s difficult to believe these people call themselves journalists. I’ll see if I have a chance later to quote some of their comments. They should be ashamed.
Recent Prager U relates to topic. Coincidentally, it came out just as we came back from a graduation in Charlottesville.
The Charlottesville Lie
There’s an error in your headline. The people you cite are not journalists. They are propagandists. Most or all of them can determine the difference between opinion and fact, that is unimportant. Their skills lie in persuading and influencing those who can’t make those distinctions. They have somehow persuaded the author of this post they are “journalists”. Sad.
One of the hallmarks of Leftism is the co-opting of the language, changing the meaning of words to fit the Leftist agenda. “Journalist” no longer means what it meant 50 years ago. (Probably not even 20 years ago.)
Today – all “journalism” is opinion. It may have some facts mixed in to punch things up. But the so-called journalist’s opinion is always present, and usually front-and-center.
I’m positive Bethany knows they are not really journalists in the traditional sense. She’s calling them “journalists” because that’s what they claim to be, when they are propagandists as you correctly point out.
If Trump is a racist, why did black-Americans and Hispanic-Americans vote for him in unusually high numbers? Furthermore, why do so many black and Hispanic Americans support him now?
They’re working in record numbers because of the job boom, something missing the eight years before January 2017.
Wow! Changing page one because of Twitter trolls, they are not even pretending to be a newspaper anymore.
The thing that Bush, McCain, Romney, never got is this, even when you say all the right things, the media will still call you a racist, bigot, etc. just because of your party affiliation. So, speak the truth and don’t get caught up with what the media says, because unless you are criticizing a Republican president, they hate you.
I disagree with Bethany and her general faction on tactics and strategy. This is war, and Bethany et al are still playing Diplomacy in their parlors.
When the other side is lobbing rockets of disinformation, lies, mischaracterizations quite deliberately, the author making the distinctions as though they don’t understand the difference between fact and opinion is like saying Hamas doesn’t know their rockets are loaded with ordinance, and once they realize they are hurting innocent people they will stop.
“Good” Trump is a fiction made up of smoke and teleprompters. Everyone know he doesn’t mean the words he says. He can’t even sound sincere when he reads them. I give him two day until he shows his true colors again. He always does.
I don’t disagree. I am asking why left-wing folks can’t talk about Trump’s unusual success with minorities in their reporting. Because his unusual success with minority people is unusual and interesting for a Republican.
Tell us, where do you get your mind-reading skills?
Please list who else is a secret racist. We should know all of these transgressors and publicly shame them based on your evaluation!
While the second is clearly aimed at partially placating the NYT readership, or at least cultural and political elites, it does tell truth. I very much want the president to assail hate but not guns. However, the truth is that he is opening the door wide to the very black-robed leftists who have bedeviled his administration to now engage in widespread gun confiscation, with the same leftist family members who have cut off conservative parents and siblings now gaining the power to really hurt them, to really grind them under with a fraudulent wave of “gun restraining orders.”
This is an example of why I don’t use the MSM for my main source of news anymore. I get my daily news mostly on Twitter and through podcasts – considering the sources, of course.