Decided to post this on a new forum re: Donald Trump and the news media.
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I don't mind actual op-eds clearly marked as such within news broadcasts. However, the media pundits have found a lot of ways to slant the "facts" to suit an agenda.
Case in point: Trump's remarks in August 2017 following the Charlottesville violence. Following his remarks in which he disparaged the goals of white supremacy:
[QUOTE]...we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence[/QUOTE]
He made the famous "both sides" statement:
[QUOTE]I will tell you something. I watched those very closely, much more closely than you people watched it. And you have -- you had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now. You had a group -- you had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit, and they were very, very violent.[/QUOTE]
A journalist then came up with a gem which the rest of the media then recycled for months:
[QUOTE]Do you think that the -- what you call the alt-left is the same as neo-Nazis?[/QUOTE]
And after that, that was the only thing the news media could say about the exchange was that Trump had supposedly placed the alt-left on the same plane as Neo-Nazis.
Naive person that I am, I thought that the news media would seek to disprove Trump's claim that the "alt-left" (aka Antifa) had initiated acts of violence. Journalists were certainly bullish on demonstrating important factoids like the attendance at Trump's inauguration. Yet, though I listened to the cable news intently for several days afterward, I didn't encounter any pundits hauling out facts to disprove Trump's statement. And the reason was that they could not, but they had an agenda to serve, and they didn't care to examine any truth-value in Trump's assertion unless the examination served the agenda.
None of this is to state that Trump is a teller of even small truths. He lies on a regular basis, but openly, unlike most politicians, who lie covertly. But I'd like to think that the Fourth Estate as being more capable of truth-telling than any politician.
Prez - The First Teen President!
1 hour ago
4 comments:
No they could. Thing is that they themselves bought into the both sides nonsense. Statistically far right wing violence eclipses far left. You're more likely to get murdered by a right wing christian than a muslim or an antifa protestor. I'll say it again. To support the alt right means that you're okay with minorities being brutalized and women being treated like chattel
I have no idea what you mean by "they could." I said the media could not prove Trump's inaccuracy, so maybe that's what you mean, but when do you imagine that the media "bought into the both sides nonsense?" When they didn't report Antifa violence at Charlottesville? If they agreed with "both sides" (ridiculous as that conflation is), then they would've rushed to make much of Antifa presence there. To date hardly any major news organization has mentioned that fact, though the news does occasionally mention Antifa thuggery if it happens to be a slow news day. Still, even that doesn't prove that they're advocating "both sides."
They could prove it. Thing is that for every anti fa act of violence there are 1000 right wingers committing an even more heinous act of violence. Antifa violence is about as real as the easter bunny in that regard.. Ian Cheong was caught helping right wingers trying to provoke violence and they frequently gloat about violence. If anything antifa are the ones reacting to the right wing. They're just expressing racism they already felt
Anyone claiming the antifa are as bad is a liar.
The media proved nothing against Trump re: Charlottesville, and the repeated misquote of "both sides" (which was obviously not directed at white supremacists, since Trump condemned the supremacists in the exact same speech) merely proves how desperate the media was to find some slogan to use against the Prez.
Quantity of violence is not a credible measure of evil. If it were, then the non-military violence of Hitler would be "about as real as the Easter Bunny" because Hitler's record is dwarfed by that of Stalin. I certainly don't trust your stats, and even if they had even a glimmer of truth, antifa and all similar intersectional violence groups, like the Black Hebrew Israelites, would still deserve condemnation and prosecution.
Victimization may mitigate some cases. It's not a blank check to do whatever you want.
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