Journalism Dead - great article by Victor Davis Hanson

[concha]

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/the-media-wounded/

 

A great mind backing up his thesis with actual facts and evidence.

Quote

There still exists a physical media in the sense of airing current events. But it is not journalism as we once understood the disinterested reporting of the news. Journalism is now dead. The media lives on.

Reporters today believe that their coverage serves higher agendas of social justice, identity politics, “equality” and diversity. To the degree a news account is expanded or ignored, praised or blasted, depends on its supposed utility to the effort to fundamentally transform the country into something unlike its founding.

At the recent third president-less White House Correspondents’ Dinner, passive-aggressive journalists whined that they were victims, standing on the barricades against the all-powerful, all-evil—and all absent—Donald Trump. If the attempt was to return professionalism to the evening and eschew the pathological celebrity obsessions of the past, the result was only more confirmation of the self-referential and narcissistic culture of the Washington press corps.

Why should we believe reporters suddenly worried about ethics, and free inquiry and speech?

No journalist who pontificates now about the supposedly First Amendment-violating Trump ever mentions that Barack Obama had Fox News’s James Rosen (and his relatives) monitored, surveilled the communications records of Associated Press reporters, spoke with the press far less often than did Trump, and often fixated on Fox News.

Journalists themselves had no problem with colleagues colluding with the Clinton campaign as evidenced in the Wikileaks Podesta trove. There was never much introspection about why the elite press and media corps—loudly progressive and feminist—was decimated by Me Too Movement allegations of long-standing sexual harassment and assault.

Were there serious worries voiced over journalistic ethics when CNN’s Donna Brazile leaked primary debate questions to the 2016 Clinton campaign? Did journalists speak out when journalist Candy Crowley abandoned her moderator role and turned into an Obama partisan in the 2012 second presidential debate? Were reporters at all worried when the Shorenstein Center cited 90 percent negative media coverage of the Trump campaign and presidency? Did they object much when Twitter and Facebook exiled conservative voices that they found inconvenient?

Are journalists concerned when campuses shout down visiting lecturers or pass speech codes to restrict free expression? Was the strange Obama-era state surveillance of fellow journalist Cheryl Atkinson of any importance to the journalistic brotherhood? Did they fret that the Obama-era FBI likely inserted informants into a political campaign, or deliberately deceived a FISA court to spy on an American citizen?

Have journalists signed any of their accustomed collective outrage letters over the New York Times’ Nazi-like anti-Semitic cartoons, and its pathetic sort of, sort of not initial apologies?

Concerning the three great psychodramas of the last two years—the Kavanaugh hearings, the Covington kids fiasco, and the Jussie Smollett fantasy—the media for too long trafficked in the lies of the discredited and predicated their coverage on ideology: feminists, Native Americans, and African-Americans as noble victims; their white male oppressors not so much, regardless of the actual facts of the case.

During the Duke Lacrosse team mess, the University of Virginia fraternity hoax, and the George Zimmerman-Trayvon Martin drama the public first began to sense the old implicit media bias had become something new—an outright distortion of evidence to serve a higher cause. We are now at the point that the news consumer has little expectation that journalists will report the facts, but assumes that they will massage, distort, and misrepresent narratives for purposes of supposed social utility.

The media does not just mislead in what it reports; it also chooses not to report news it finds antithetical to its social justice mission. Voters never learned about what Barack Obama actually had said at a dinner honoring Rashid Khalidi because journalists suppressed his speech, in the same fashion the public never knew that then-Senator Obama had posed for a photo-op with Louis Farrakhan, a picture also never released until after Obama had left office. In a new condemnatory account of media misbehavior, Unfreedom of the Press, Mark Levin inter alia devotes a discussion to what we might call the “un-news,” the long history of deliberate suppression of important stories that do not advance the media’s ideological objectives that transcend simply reporting the facts of important daily events.

We might call their modus operandi “critical journalistic theory” that postulates there are few disinterested facts, only interpretations constructed by white male elites. So, to get at a different “truth,” journalists must deconstruct the story by changing or omitting bothersome facts to transmit the “true” essence of an event.

Recently, the media was faced with an existential decision over whether to own up to its peddling myths about Russian collusion or to double down on them. So they perpetuated the farce by bragging on their own contributions to it, and by extension sought to ensure their tarnished reputations by further tarnishing them.

There was never any evidence to support the collusion hoax. Despite denials, the yarn arose mostly from Hillary Clinton’s (illegal) hiring of British subject Christopher Steele (albeit through the intermediaries of the DNC, Perkins-Coe, and Fusion GPS) to smear her election opponent. After all, presidential candidates are not supposed to hire foreign nationals to work with other foreign nationals to conduct espionage to undermine an opponent’s campaign—and then illegally hide the nature of such a “campaign expense” through three firewalls.

After her defeat, “collusion” morphed into a progressive and media generated mechanism at first to account for the inexplicable Clinton defeat, then to abort the unpalatable Trump transition and presidency, and finally as a desperate preemptive effort to thwart investigation of high crimes of Obama-era officials. And the collusion myth caused the nation a great deal of harm until even the onetime progressive heartthrob Robert Mueller’s “dream team” found no evidence for it whatsoever

In response, did the media in introspective fashion, reexamine why they had peddled collusion through leaks, groupthink, and self-righteous sermons about their own wounded fawn egos? Hardly. No sooner had Muller found no collusion and no case for prosecuting “obstruction” of such a non-crime than the media first declared that itself had been correct in peddling the Russian conspiracy theory, and, second, moved immediately to “tax returns,” in essence learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

Lately a tiny few progressive journalists have tried to warn their colleagues that the collusion farce and other frauds have all but ruined what was left of the reputation of American journalism. The leftist anti-Trump Nation has just published Aaron Mate’s exhaustive account of the falsities, smears, and sheer ridiculousness of the media obsession with collusion.

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibii, another progressive anti-Trumper, had earlier done the same. And a few journalists, despite being deeply embedded within the Democratic-media nexus, have voiced warnings on other fronts.

CNN’s Jake Tapper finally had to remind his television audience that, contra to the Joe Biden rollout campaign video and the progressive gospel, Donald Trump did not excuse white nationalists and Klansmen during the 2017 Charlottesville violence.

Recent polls of likely voters, of all Americans, and of even the Washington press corps itself, show an overwhelming consensus the media is both biased in general and in particular against the Trump presidency.

“Fake news” is not just a Trump talking point or obsession. It is a factual account of what journalism has become—so often an arm of the progressive movement and an incestuous and inbred group of New York and Washington coastal elite mediocrities, or what former Obama official Ben Rhodes cynically wrote off as an “echo chamber” of greenhorn know-nothings.

CNN’s White House correspondent Jim Acosta can delude himself into thinking the media got it right on collusion fantasies, but his own act as a disruptive and shallow performance artist has discredited him as a serious journalist.  His own network has all but ruined its reputation and lost much of its former audience by reporting outright falsities, and employing entertainment and news hosts in a wide variety of shows who descended into gross buffoonery—from Kathy Griffin’s decapitation video to Anderson Cooper’s on-air Trump defecation metaphor to Reza Aslan’s “piece of s—t” commentary to the late Anthony Bourdain’s quip about poisoning Trump.

Do we still remember the CNN news team in December 2014 doing an on-air “hands-up” charade in honor of the Ferguson shooting victim Michael Brown? Note that even Eric Holder’s Justice Department found that Michael Brown never so attempted to surrender to police. CNN never apologized for its news team trafficking in false news that only inflamed passions at a time of increased national tensions.

CNN reporters like Gloria Borger, Chris Cuomo, Eric Lichtblau, Manu Raju, Brian Rokus, Jake Tapper, Jeff Zeleny, and teams such as Jim Sciutto, Carl Bernstein, and Marshall Cohen as well as Thomas Frank, and Lex Harris all have peddled false rumors and gossip passed off as fact.

CNN “analyst” James Clapper, himself an admitted liar who has deliberately misled Congress while under oath, for months claimed that Trump was a virtual Putin asset. He never recanted. Finally, he and others have ended up attacking the idea that members of the Obama intelligence team “spied” on the Trump campaign, in effect defending himself on air by ridiculing charges against people like himself.  None of these journalists wondered why they seemed to have repeated the same errors in the same fashion with the same denials of culpability.

What destroyed the present generation of journalism was not just that they live in coastal corridors of progressive groupthink. It was not just because they almost all graduated from liberal journalism programs that still regurgitate ossified Watergate psychodramas of investigative reporters as comic book heroes. Nor is the cause of their decline even their own hair-trigger and social media snark or the pushback from Donald J. Trump.

Instead, over the last twenty years, marquee journalists saw themselves as wannabe celebrities who were to make news, not to report it, to massage stories in such a fashion to serve their social justice agendas, and to virtue signal their superior morality, as many revolved in and out of government.

What have they become instead? People with enormous self-regard, but with little experience with the public whom they were supposed to serve.

They espouse opinions on nearly everything while knowing almost nothing. They believe Washington and New York are the centers of the universe, while the universe is making both more irrelevant. As their ethics dissipated, their vocabularies shrank. Their poor communication skills grew ever poorer, and they displayed little knowledge of the history and culture of the people they reported on. Most could give an in-depth lecture on Botox, but are ignorant about the U.S. Constitution or basic facts of American history.

The people finally are tiring of their bias, their incompetence and their arrogance—and are finally beginning to ignore most of what they say and write.

 

 

[concha]

1 minute ago, Sportsnut said:

Looks and sounds like simply an opinion piece.

 

That is because you are stupid. 

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[Horsefly]

1 hour ago, concha said:

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/12/the-media-wounded/

 

A great mind backing up his thesis with actual facts and evidence.

 

When I read articles like this that Indict one side (the left) and provide no narrative on indiscretions on the other side (the right) I become skeptical.  

It took me 5 minutes to find examples of verified lies or misinformation pundits from the right  have spewed over their desks all in support of the same thing progressive sites do ... influence partisan politics.  

[concha]

12 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

When I read articles like this that Indict one side (the left) and provide no narrative on indiscretions on the other side (the right) I become skeptical.  

It took me 5 minutes to find examples of verified lies or misinformation pundits from the right  have spewed over their desks all in support of the same thing progressive sites do ... influence partisan politics.  

 

Virtually the entirety of the major, traditional media complex in this country leans left.

That is the issue/problem.

ABC/CBS/NBC/PBS/NPR/MSNBC/CNN (reaching some 25M-30M households per night vs maybe 3M-4M for Fox News' top shows)... virtually every major metropolitan newspaper...

And he is not talking about "pundits".  He is talking about "journalists" and "reporters". These are supposed to be professionals who dispassionately give us just the facts ma'am. Who, what, when, where, why and how.  And - as mentioned in the article - not the just the WWWWWH that fits the agenda.

[Blueliner]

Excellent article. Plain and simple. This isn’t an anti-left piece. It’s an astute observation of what then MSM/journalism has become. Many of us saw this morphing a long time ago. And the en there are others who hate Trump so much that they either a) are blinded by their hate, or b) just choose to ignore what’s happening to push their agenda. I just don’t understand how anyone can’t see this. I lost a friend over this very topic. Not by my choice, mind you. But in typical leftists fashion, he decided to shit can our friendship of over 10 years over this....and his absolute hatred for our President. What did he call it?...”the last bastion of American Institution”? SMDH. Hopefully, he’ll come around. Miss that dude. But I digress.....

 

[Blueliner]

29 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

When I read articles like this that Indict one side (the left) and provide no narrative on indiscretions on the other side (the right) I become skeptical.  

It took me 5 minutes to find examples of verified lies or misinformation pundits from the right  have spewed over their desks all in support of the same thing progressive sites do ... influence partisan politics.  

Please show us your examples. Thanks. 

[concha]

9 minutes ago, Blueliner said:

Please show us your examples. Thanks. 

 

I have no doubt that he has examples of right-wing pundits saying shit.

The issue is the supposed "trusted major news sources" of the past 20-30 years (and in several cases well beyond).

The left points reflexively and goes into paroxysms over Fox News' very existence as the sole major right-of-center news network in the country.

Meanwhile, the entire old alphabet soup media of the last 50 years leans shamelessly their way.  It's far more lop-sided than David vs Goliath.

And now we have the major social media giants shutting down conservative content.

The first amendment matters to them. As long as your opinions toe the line.

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[Horsefly]

19 minutes ago, Drummer61 said:

Show them all to us and in context...

Do your own research, Fox News is not innocent and 100% accurate all the time.  

[NotBigdaddybloom]

It snot just the left leaning journalists! It’s also the propaganda purveyors Google and Yahoo search engines that put left leaning websites on top!

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/google-favors-cnn-new-york-times-study

Google's Top Stories box provides users with articles from left-leaning news organizations such as CNN 62.4 percent of the time -- with only 11.3 percent coming from outlets that are considered conservative, according to a study by Northwestern University researchers.

[Horsefly]

Just now, Drummer61 said:

The article was outstanding, true and I loved it....Nobody ever said Fox was or is omnipotent, rather far more honest and fair than any other...This atrticle troop,is above reproach and you, as an honest man,hopefully, should say that...

I do, but I condemn all.  I don’t make arguments to please one side nor does this misinformation begin with the Duke lacrosse players and Trayvon Martin.  

This author left off the lack of journalism displayed  in the lies about the Gulf of Tonkin, WMD in Iraq, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO and the illegitimacy of claims against US civilians. Things the media passed on as facts contrary to th facts.   

[NotBigdaddybloom]

10 minutes ago, Sportsnut said:

Maybe 62.4 percent of the time CNN had info others didn't.

Not all agencies cover the same stories, especially if they are not of national note.

I know you like to use ifs and maybes as legitimate claims, but this thread is based on facts. MAYBE you should go opine on one of your ifs ands or butts thread!!! And I didn’t misspell butts!

[Horsefly]

7 minutes ago, Drummer61 said:

What he left out was not the issue, rather the lack of honesty and  integrity  of the secular press.... You read  it and like I said, I can't believe you are not in full compliance and agreement.....It's all valid dispite  things that in your opinion,  were left out...

Part of his attempt was to condemn the left.  I’m condemning ALL media and gave examples from BOTH sides of the aisle, unlike this author and it took me 10 min.  

Media, print and tv, has a long history of propagandizing political positions. 

[concha]

14 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

I do, but I condemn all.  I don’t make arguments to please one side nor does this misinformation begin with the Duke lacrosse players and Trayvon Martin.  

This author left off the lack of journalism displayed  in the lies about the Gulf of Tonkin, WMD in Iraq, Iran-Contra, COINTELPRO and the illegitimacy of claims against US civilians. Things the media passed on as facts contrary to th facts.   

I think it's pretty obvious he was limiting his thesis to more recent times and the current situation.  Many of the things you mention are more governmental deceptions rather than pure media bias. For example: was it reasonable for the press to have known and refute government claims regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident?  WMDs in Iraq had been claimed by both sides of the aisle for many years (videos of Clinton talking about them in the 90s are easily found on YouTube). 

[Horsefly]

1 minute ago, concha said:

I think it's pretty obvious he was limiting his thesis to more recent times and the current situation.  Many of the things you mention are more governmental deceptions rather than pure media bias. For example: was it reasonable for the press to have known and refute government claims regarding the Gulf of Tonkin incident?  WMDs in Iraq had been claimed by both sides of the aisle for many years (videos of Clinton talking about them in the 90s are easily found on YouTube). 

All of these claims, current and historical, were based on the media running with the accuser or the government on their positions.  Nothing was investigated.  

The point is media propagandizing political positions is not new. 

[concha]

2 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

Part of his attempt was to condemn the left.  I’m condemning ALL media and gave examples from BOTH sides of the aisle, unlike this author and it took me 10 min.  

Media, print and tv, has a long history of propagandizing political positions. 

 

Yes.

It is the left that is the most egregious offender given the numbers and size of the media outlets it dominates.

It's Shaq vs. Peter Dinklage.

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[concha]

1 minute ago, Horsefly said:

All of these claims, current and historical, were based on the media running with the accuser or the government on their positions.  Nothing was investigated.  

The point is media propagandizing political positions is not new. 

 

New?

How about persistent, consistent and egregious (as in "today")?

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[Blueliner]

34 minutes ago, concha said:

 

I have no doubt that he has examples of right-wing pundits saying shit.

The issue is the supposed "trusted major news sources" of the past 20-30 years (and in several cases well beyond).

The left points reflexively and goes into paroxysms over Fox News' very existence as the sole major right-of-center news network in the country.

Meanwhile, the entire old alphabet soup media of the last 50 years leans shamelessly their way.  It's far more lop-sided than David vs Goliath.

And now we have the major social media giants shutting down conservative content.

The first amendment matters to them. As long as your opinions toe the line.

.

Well put. Sad, but true. The leftist agenda has  been somewhat palatable over my years. I’ve even agreed and or voted dem in a the past. But I cannot, with a good conscience, overlook what they’ve become and what the media/journalism has become. The unfettered, unbridled, unethical, ....straight making shit up..., behavior is over the top now. And the leftists just eat that shit up due to the aforementioned reasons.  Thank God the American people seem to be recognizing this. I hope that at least some of our Republics fabric can be saved.

[Horsefly]

6 minutes ago, concha said:

 

New?

How about persistent, consistent and egregious (as in "today")?

.

 There is no doubt his piece is to condemn leftist sites and ignore the right wing media’s tendencies to frame and shape the narrative for conservatives. You know and I know there are examples, so why weren’t those included in his piece?  

This article got the result he was looking for: right wing media exceptionalism.  And my point is they aren’t.  

[Horsefly]

8 minutes ago, concha said:

 

Yes.

It is the left that is the most egregious offender given the numbers and size of the media outlets it dominates.

It's Shaq vs. Peter Dinklage.

.

Size of the Media outlet is not important if they are all complicit at times in deceit and dishonesty.  

[Horsefly]

4 minutes ago, Drummer61 said:

His FACTS pointed out falicies and bad deeds, that fact should be applauded,you did not,rather you said he did not point other differences...Applaud this post as it's coyrrect and valid....

When a honest and thorough journalist condemns ALL media, they’ll earn my respect. 

[concha]

2 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

Size of the Media outlet is not important if they are all complicit at times in deceit and dishonesty.  

 

Absurd.

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[Horsefly]

7 minutes ago, concha said:

 

Absurd.

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No that’s accountability, regardless of size and impact. At the end of the day is that not what you seek?  Honesty and integrity in reporting ... period! 

[concha]

20 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

No that’s accountability, regardless of size and impact. At the end of the day is that not what you seek?  Honesty and integrity in reporting ... period! 

 

That's ignoring going after the egregious offenders first, as anyone with common sense would do.

VDH did not try to excuse or vindicate anyone (Fox News, for example).  He pointed out that our media - which has the power to influence our politics and elections - is currently dominated by partisan left-wing outlets. This is undeniable. it is also unhealthy to the democratic underpinnings of our republic.

If we had Fox on one side and MSDNC or the Clinton News Network on opposite sides but ABC/CBS/NBC/NPR/PBS/NYT/WaPo etc were all non-partisan straight shooters then there wouldn't be much need for discussion. But you have Fox vs Everyone Else and Everyone Else is telling the American public they're not partisan.

[Horsefly]

9 minutes ago, concha said:

 

That's ignoring going after the egregious offenders first, as anyone with common sense would do.

VDH did not try to excuse or vindicate anyone (Fox News, for example).  He pointed out that our media - which has the power to influence our politics and elections - is currently dominated by partisan left-wing outlets. This is undeniable. it is also unhealthy to the democratic underpinnings of our republic.

If we had Fox on one side and MSDNC or the Clinton News Network on opposite sides but ABC/CBS/NBC/NPR/PBS/NYT/WaPo etc were all non-partisan straight shooters then there wouldn't be much need for discussion. But you have Fox vs Everyone Else and Everyone Else is telling the American public they're not partisan.

But he’s not a prosecutor nor judge so he’s saving company nor gov resources by only condemning who he perceived as more egregious.  nothing material will come from his article. 

Anyways, enough on this topic I’m more intrigued by your presidents tariffs and the potential, self-initiated implosion of our economy, the one area he had as a positive.  I can’t wait to see how this unfolds.  

[concha]

6 minutes ago, Horsefly said:

But he’s not a prosecutor nor judge so he’s saving company nor gov resources by only condemning who he perceived as more egregious.  nothing material will come from his article. 

Anyways, enough on this topic I’m more intrigued by your presidents tariffs and the impending self-initiated implosion of our economy, the one area he had as a positive.  I can’t wait to see how this unfolds.  

 

Because continuing to let China fuck us raw in trade and intellectual property theft is the way to proceed.

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