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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
I think this idea came into being during the original licensing of broadcast media. The Fairness Doctrine was adopted in 1949. That certainly created an expectation of honesty. As for print media, there was probably a time during the advertising age, when retailers wanted media with more universal appeal. Before then print media was sponsored by partisans. Now media is partisan under the expired guise of being non-partisan.
Any biography of a mid-century politician – Nixon, obviously, but others as well – should dispel any illusions about even the briefest period of ‘fairness’ or ‘balance’ in the US media landscape.
The corporate media must be better understood by our side. The legacy Republican POV is that corporations are basically good free-market entities that help us all. The ‘left’ are supposedly against corporations and capitalism ( such as it is). Now the left have seized control of corporations by various means, and it has morphed into a kind of fascism of cooperation between Democrats in government and corporate interests, with Republicans hanging on desperately to stay relevant.
The news media is the tip of the spear for the media conglomerates. Disney, Comcast, et al are huge multinational entities which have a much bigger stake in outcomes than just their news divisions might indicate.
The news divisions act on the behalf of the parent companies, using their leverage with public opinion and decision-making on what should be in the conversation and what is better ignored or dismissed. It’s not just who advertises on the actual news shows, it’s who advertises on their magazines,TV shows, radio shows and sports. If the ‘news’ shows lost money, it wouldn’t mean much as long as they delivered the helpful narrative.
The persuasive power of the news media is massive when they align on a target. This kind of power is very difficult to gauge. The price of a 2 minute Super Bowl commercial may be a million dollars, the price of late night comedians, and daily snark from Joy Behar and spin on Good Morning America, framing and narrative massaging and softball/hardball interviews by George Stephanopoulos…. priceless.
Is there ever any skepticism about how these entities are promoting vaccines while their number one advertiser is the pharmaceutical industry?
Why wouldn’t a huge company like Disney not try to influence politics to help themselves?
Naturally, an alliance will emerge. Fauci and Democrats will take a side, they will be promoted and defended by the corporate media without question. This reinforces itself creating an impenetrable edifice.
These companies have worldwide financial interests and hold no allegiance to the USA as constituted, and less and less with each passing year.
Don’t forget, more people watch the ancillary ‘news’ shows like Jimmy Kimmel and The View, where so much narrative-crafting happens. The Hollywood machine of popularity all but forces every celebrity to toe the line, although by the time they get famous they are already pre-qualified advocates. These are the low information voters, that don’t even watch news programs, so they are even more easily influenced.
Its becoming clearer that actual numbers of news viewers isn’t as important as who exactly follows these false narratives. So CNN losing ratings isn’t especially impactful, since influential people are still taking their cues from these outlets.
I now seriously question the entire scam. They are little more than snake oil salesman at this point. How many pharmaceuticals do we really need? Some, I guess…but
How many Viagra or Ciallis commercials do I have to watch before I need glasses?
I knew it was a good thing I’ve worn glasses since 1st grade. :-)
Of course, the media is not to be trusted. They never have been truthful for the entire length of the Nations’s history.
So what is new? Only buying the big lie, that the purpose of a journalist is to present the facts and only the facts. They have always viewed themselves as somehow making the world better, i.e. selling their view. Nothing new about propaganda or “Yellow” journalism. It has always been thus.
What is getting worse is the actual suppression of views different from the radical left. Papers should just admit their biases, say what they want, that is what free speech is all about.
It is the new push to declare political speech somehow hate speech or worse, that goes against the main reason we have the first amendment, it is to let those in a minority that we disagree with express their views. To the extent the radical left can suppress viewpoints differing from theirs we have a real existential crisis on our hands that threatens our Republic.
This and the fact that the public square is controlled by four tech companies is a disaster. The constitution cannot function as intended in these circumstances.
Too many people on the right / libertarian are so dense about this.
I need to have a twitter account to receive potentially important messages from our city government, our police department, the county, and the state. And the Border Patrol. Doesn’t seem like “just a private company”.
Yeah, at that point, it’s a utility, to be regulated like one.
Precisely , I’m old enough to remember 1960 , the press was just as Gaga over JFK as they still are over Obama , if not more so. One of the reasons they hated Nixon was his taking down of one of their idols Alger Hiss, they never forgot that and eventually took their vengeance .
And in the 1950s the press routinely portrayed Eisenhower as a grinning fool who played golf instead of being the president.
All Journalists Are Statists™