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Ron DeSantis Says the Media Aren’t to Be Trusted. What Say You?
CNN’s Brian Stelter (who ironically hosts a program called ‘Reliable Sources’) is professionally offended that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says the media lie. “We all know corporate media lies, OK? They do not tell the truth. Assume what they tell you is false and then figure out why they’re telling you a false narrative.”
This kind of talk will not please “principled Republicans.” It’s not proper, or principled, for a Republican to suggest the media aren’t playing square. Calling them liars is positively Trumpian! “The media don’t lie, per se,” their apologists argue. “They just get the story wrong, sometimes.” But, let’s take look at a few news stories the national media have “gotten wrong” in the last couple of years.
⦁ Border Patrol agents were beating immigrants with whips.
⦁ Oklahoma hospitals were so overwhelmed with Ivermectin overdoses they were turning away gunshot victims.
⦁ The crowd at a NASCAR event was chanting “Let’s Go Brandon.”
⦁ Covington kids in MAGA hats harassed an elderly, Native American veteran during a protest.
⦁ Joe Rogan took “horse dewormer” to treat Covid.
⦁ The Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.
As I look at the stories that the national media blatantly lied about, I cannot help but notice a pattern. They all favor a particular partisan narrative. I’m trying to think of a story the national media “got wrong” that favored the other side’s narrative and… sorry, I got nothin’.
If the media “getting it wrong” broke both ways, you could chalk it up to the usual excuses. “Newsroom budget cuts” is what the journalistic profession usually claims. (i.e.”We would lie a lot less if you paid us more.”) But the pattern isn’t random, which means the pattern is deliberate.
The DeSantis quote in context appears to be referring to one specific topic. So, in generalizing it, Stelter may be engaging in a bit of deception. Or, he could just be getting it wrong.
Published in Journalism
People go into journalism to change the world, not to report facts. Facts get in the way of changing the world. Facts get in the way of the stories they want to tell.
Occam’s razor explains this best. When all the mistakes go one way, its not mistakes.
He is coming close to saying “fake news”.
Wow…if Mr. Stelter had any integrity he would correct himself…but we know that he has none.
Hilarious! And right on target!
Where did this concept of a honest fair media come from? It was not at the founding. In the old days most cities have multiple papers that represented different perspectives. The biggest lie of all is that they were ever honest and can not be questioned.
Journalism school, I think.
They call it “advocacy journalism”.
“Journalists” especially on the left (they weren’t so much always) likely got tired of people not believing them 100% and so they created a… narrative, I guess is the word… that we must.
Walter Cronkite !
It’s complicated, but public schools are part of the problem. They teach children that yellow journalism was a big thing in the McKinley administration, but then nothing happened for 100 years and everything was fine. When FDR was on TV, there were 2 or 3 channels, so whatever he said was the official truth. And that keeps going until cable television explodes near the end of the Cold War. Public schools are state actors and need state narratives. Which is why they teach kids to not question the media they’re in bed with.
You are right though about the honest media myth. In the 19th century, you bought the Democrat Chronicle or the Whig Sentinel and knew what you were getting.
I see this meme posted every month or so. It’s clear proof that the lying about unbiased media worked, until the internet and new media took away the stranglehold on information. Cronkite almost single handedly turned the abject failure of the Tet offensive into a loss for MACV in the minds of the US public.
“AND THAT’S THE WAY IT ISn’t!”
Well, yeah kinda. Except that broadcast TV didn’t come along until 1948, and FDR died in 1945.
One of the things I particularly like about DeSantis is that he, more than most other Republican politicians, has learned from the Trump years that meeting the media head-on can work. I think that is the number one lesson of the Trump years, and it’s one I want more Republican politicians and candidates to embrace.
I’m not sure what you mean by “principled Republicans,” but I think most normal Republican politicians and candidates can get on board with this. If you’re talking about those erstwhile Republicans who actually endorsed President* Brandon in 2020, then maybe you have a point. But I think most of us who consider ourselves principled Republicans can agree that the mainstream media are by and large shills for the Democratic Party, and not to be trusted.
As per yr final statement above: in Chicago, at least until the Nineties, you bought The Chicago Tribune if you wanted the conservative viewpoint, and the Chicago SunTimes if you wanted the liberal viewpoint. The Trib was the morning paper, while the Sun Times came out some hours later.
The time difference was important, as since there was no internet, having an update on the day’s ctivities mattered.
Growing up, my parents subscribed to the Trib, but I ran over to the news stand every afternoon so my dad and I could read the evening news together after dinner.
I hope you enjoyed the “Early Edition” TV series.
Are you saying Biden was wrong when he said President FDR got on TV to comfort people after the stock market crash of 1929?
You’re right John; in the 1800s every politician usually had a newspaper in his backpocket. Following that, became the period of “yellow journalism”. IMHO, I think that the 1950s were the only period that newspapers actually tried to follow their lofty “Code of Ethics”
https://journalistsresource.org/home/code-of-ethics/
Of course, in the last 50 years or so, as newspapers were swallowed up by conglomerates, any “code-of-ethics” is a joke. The pimply-faced little jerks that are being rolled out by our schools of journalism, simply write to please their far-left masters in the Democratic Party.
I use that term because the people who run The Dispatch, The Bulwark, NAMB-Lincoln Project, and so on call themselves “principled conservatives” — as they grub money from leftist billionaires and run ads attacking Republicans. They are the folks who clutched the pearls as they dove for the fainting couches whenever Trump described dishonest journalists as “the enemy of the people.”
Ah. Got it.
They’re a minority of Republicans. Most of us, including the principled ones, voted to re-elect a conservative Republican president instead of the guy we got. But I get your point.
Lumping The Dispatch, The Bulwark and The Lincoln Project together is not unlike lumping the football programs from The Arizona Cardinals, the Dallas Cowboys, the Arizona State Sun Devils, the University of Arizona Wildcats and Scottsdale Saguaro High School all together because I have attended their games.
Likewise, it would be like lumping former Republican Senators Jim DeMint, John McCain, Tom Coburn, Ted Stevens, Bob Packwood or Bob Dole all together.
Likewise, it would be like lumping the UK, Spain and Croatia together as European nations.
Likewise, it would be like lumping Victor Tango Kilo and me as members of Ricochet.
Likewise, it would be like lumping your current spouse, and the last half-dozen girlfriends and/or boyfriends together.
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The Dispatch is Trump Skeptic and Pro-Republican.
The Bulwark is Anti-Trump and Republican Skeptic.
The Lincoln Project is Anti-Trump and Anti-Republican.
They all have very distinct points of view. I listen to almost all Dispatch Podcasts, some Bulwark Podcasts, and rarely The Lincoln Project Podcasts.
Story Selection is the biggest bias
How else do you explain Hunter Biden’s “business deals” not being a big story while his father was VP.
If a child of Mike Pence did this during 2016-2020, do you think it would have gotten little coverage
Perhaps co-equal with “there really is a swamp and it really is out to get you” (and its corollary “if their name appears on a list of approved candidates [for cabinet, Supreme Court, whatever] they’ll probably betray you”).
Some news outlets are controlled and coordinated They carry the same stores the same way with the same points, often even the same language. CNN, CBS, NBC,ABC. In contrast Fox is careful even though owned by a Democrat and had started to show it more openly, but lost viewers and had to go back toward the middle. Newsmax, is conservative, but also low budget so mostly just talks. Folks should do their best to ignore the channels that are obviously coordinated by the left, and try to avoid any ordinary products they advertise.
The conserving conservatives at the Bulwark are upset because Kyrsten Sinema is obstructing President Brandon’s spending agenda (which they support with the unbridled enthusiasm of Billy Mumphrey). So, in true “conserving conservatism” fashion, they’re attacking her fashion choices.
You read about “Yellow Journalism” and the Spanish American War in history textbooks, then you’re supposed to assume somewhere between then and now the journalism industry –of it’s own free will and volition– miraculously de-corrupted itself.
My Brother who has been incrementally dragged kicking and screaming to his red pill. He defended all the corrupt politicians and bureaucrat since day one of Obama. Until it was obvious to everyone.
He still stands by Saint Cronkite.
As they say in Peanuts.
“Good Grief Charlie Brown “
You can go even farther back to James Callender and the beginning of the republic – Washington used to call them “infamous scribblers”